How an over-Westernised intellectual class became disconnected from African realities
By AfricaHeadline Editorial Team | July 2025
LAGOS — Across the continent, the image of the African intellectual has increasingly been shaped by Western aesthetics, academic prestige, and coded language.
AfricaHeadline Reports Team
editorial@africaheadline.com
The tie, more than a symbol of formality, has become the uniform of an elite that no longer speaks the language of the people, not in the literal sense, nor in the political.
“The problem with Africa is the failure of leadership. But perhaps it is also the failure of a certain intellectual elite to lead with truth.” — Chinua Achebe
In recent decades, Africa has witnessed the rise of a highly educated intellectual class, many trained in top universities in the UK, France, or the United States.
However, many of these professionals return to the continent with a foreign gaze, one trained to analyse, not to listen. They speak fluently about “resilience,” “global agendas,” and “development models,” but rarely set foot in the streets where they were born.
At international forums, this elite presents Africa in charts, papers, and PowerPoints, yet often fails to represent it authentically. The people, those who live from subsistence farming, informal trade, faith, and improvisation, are largely absent from their proposals. In this context, the tie no longer represents professionalism alone, but a rupture: the widening disconnect between thinkers and those who live the African reality.
Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has long been a fierce critic of this pattern. By refusing to write in English and instead choosing his native Kikuyu, Ngũgĩ challenged the linguistic monopoly of the elite. “Decolonisation begins with language,” he argues.
Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi adds: “The shame of being African began the day the African wanted to be European.” Today, that shame wears a tie, speaks fluent technical English, and quotes European authors while ignoring Amílcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Mia Couto, or Luandino Vieira.
Across many African countries, communities continue to function based on traditional values. In rural Angola, elders are still consulted during crises.
In Guinea-Bissau, traditional mediation rituals resolve disputes where the state falls short. In Rwanda, the “gacaca” community court system helped rebuild reconciliation after genocide. Yet, such grassroots systems are rarely studied in African universities or integrated into national policy by “experts” in suits and ties.
In urban centers, African-made solutions to African problems continue to emerge. In the informal settlements of Kinshasa, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, young people develop mobile apps for health monitoring, agriculture sales, or education.
Women organize cooperatives and manage rotating savings groups that keep entire communities afloat. These forms of innovation don’t make it into IMF reports, yet they are the backbone of real African resilience, often ignored by distant intellectuals.
The reality is clear: many who call themselves “African intellectuals” have forgotten Africa. They seek validation in Paris or New York but cannot utter two phrases in Kikongo or Xitsonga. They speak of inclusion while avoiding the neighborhoods of the excluded. They produce studies but touch no lives. They have become consumers of foreign ideas, not producers of local solutions.
This scenario calls for a new social contract with African intellectuals. A return to the ground. A commitment to the people. A kind of knowledge that isn’t measured by eloquence in English, but by its ability to effect real change. Africa needs a new type of intellectual, one who is tied to Africa, not just to their CV.
