The Morality of African Socialism and its Challenges: Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa in context and Justification for a Reconstruction

Abstract

There is no doubt that African socialism was highly treasured wherever you see Africans before the advent of colonialism and globalization. This was the era in African society that cultural values and practices fundamentally made selfishness, individualism, capitalism, oppression, and injustice unthinkable. The unadulterated African socialism placed a high premium on the recognition of every human being in the society as a person with inviolable dignity that must be respected and protected from any form of injustice and abuse. This concept of African socialism is both ontologically and morally connected to human dignity. Hence, African socialism makes human dignity to be properly defined, justified, promoted, and preserved from any socio-political manipulation. Julius Nyerere was a contemporary of African socio-political thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria, and Leopold Senghor of Senegal that tried to establish a structure on which African socialism can function effectively in Africa. Nyerere’sUjaama became the cynosure of eyes for many Africans that long for African form of socialism. Today, the contemporary socio-political realities in Africa make his extraction of African socialism utopic because of the inherent challenges in the socio-political system. Therefore, there is a need for a restructuring of the fundamental principles of Ujaama for it to be more feasible in the African society of our time.