Year 2026

Modernising African Culture: Why Fighting Westernisation Misses The Point

westernisation modernising african culture

Have you ever been in a room where people sort of just romanticise their local culture, affirming things like masquerades and bride prices during marriages? How about where people attack what they perceive as Westernisation, frowning at things like LGBTQ+ rights, as well as birth through Caesarean section?

If you met me a few years ago, I would think for a moment and say, I am not one of those people, I prefer the Western culture over our local African culture.

But that would be inaccurate.

Death Makes Everything Meaningful [Here’s Why]

If you had asked me a few years ago what makes life meaningful, I would have told you: To marry the love of your life, nurture your kids together, and do the work that fulfils you.

None of those values has changed. Though for a long time I always saw death as an enemy of those things. However, I have started to see that death doesn't necessarily threaten a meaningful life. It makes it.

Becoming a Polymath: Why the Most Distinctive People Are Simply the Most Fully Themselves [And How You Can Be Too]

Often, it is the courage of people to be their full selves — no matter how ridiculous, weird, or frustrating it gets — that has led to many of the amazing people and things we know and rely on today.

What these people share is not genius in the conventional sense. They are what some would call polymaths — people who draw from multiple disciplines, interests, and lived experiences to create something the world has no easy category for.

The Character Crisis: Are You Part of What’s Wrong With Society?

The counter-argument that "everyone has flaws, and so we must not judge" is an idea I intend to break through the rest of this piece, not just because it justifies the corruption eating up Africa, but because it's a psychological trick called "moral disengagement"—where people use nice-sounding phrases to avoid acknowledging evil. It's how someone says, "like him or hate him, you have to respect his hustle or doings" while ignoring that the "hustle" or “Doings” is theft and the "hate" exists because he's destroying lives.