Mbiti’s model of time and its implications to African development: An “Emo-Mechanical” intervention.

Abstract

This work seeks to examine the implications of Mbiti’s Philosophy on African development as a way of tackling the problems of African development through the instrumentality of time. Mbiti’s centres his philosophy on time which he sees as the key to African ontology. This paper uses this philosophy to examine the problems of development in Africa as Mbiti sees time as a key to understanding African ontology. This reveals that time has the capacity to reach every aspect of life in Africa as it is essential in explaining the beliefs, practices, attitudes and general way of life of the African people. Time also has overbearing influence in the politics, education, economic and religious aspects of life in Africa and addressing the issues in these areas tantamount to development in the society. Therefore, using the analytic method, this paper discloses the positive and negative implications of Mbiti’s philosophy to African development. It observes that if Mbiti’s concept of time is the way to comprehend African ontology, it can be used as a mechanism of understanding the problems of development in Africa. It contends that if due attention is given to the study of time in Africa; it has the capacity of tackling the problems of development in the continent. This paper concludes by recommending a model called an “Emo-Mechanical model” which is an African inspired developmental model that involves a strategic blending of African emotionalized time model and the western mechanical time category for an optimal results. This model of development will address the problems of development in Africa by appropriating the gains of western goal oriented model and at the same time retain African communual and relational values and peculiarities.