African Women Culture

From Egypt in the north to South Africa in the south calls for the recognition of the rights of women in each of the countries in Africa are urgent and insistent. Statistical data supports what the eye plainly sees, women throughout Africa do much more than their share of the work in many spheres of daily life. They maintain households, fetch firewood and water, work the fields, sell goods in the marketplace, and more. And yet the irony is that this work remains so invisible and undervalued that a chapter entitled “Women in Africa” still seems appropriate in a book such as

Europe over more than two millenia of over devestating conflict has organized itself along ethnic and linguistic lines. This has not occurred in Africa. Most modern African states reflect the boundareies drawn by European colonial powers in the 19th century during the scramble for Africa. The Europeans commonly ignored tribal and linguistic afinities among African peoples. This mean that tribal groups were often fracrtured and separated by the European imposed boundaries. Thus modern

1. Overall status of women in Africa

The role of women in traditional Judaism has been grossly misrepresented and misunderstood. The position of women is not nearly as lowly as many modern people think; in fact, the position of women in halakhah (Jewish Law) that dates back to the biblical period is in many ways better than the position of women under American civil law as recently as a century ago. Many of the important feminist leaders of the 20th century (Gloria Steinem, for example, and Betty Friedan) are Jewish women, and some commentators have suggested that this is no coincidence: the respect accorded to women in Jewish tradition was a part of their ethnic culture.


In traditional Judaism, women are for the most part seen as separate but equal. Women’s obligations and responsibilities are different from men’s, but no less important (in fact, in some ways, women’s

African art masks, African paintings and African art patterns

The mask plays a very important role in traditional African art and life, particularly spiritual life. Masks are used during special events likeceremonies and celebrations and their purposes range from honoring and entertaining to initiating or blessing, while at the same time serving as both disguise and protection for the wearer. Usually, African masks are carved of wood but some are made with other materials such as cloth or clay, and they can also be painted and decorated with other things like

3: The Third Phase


(i): Cultural Setting
By the early 1980s it was apparent to some African scholars that out of the process of revaluation of ATR a certain tension arises. Some have begun to voice concern that much of the work is being done in a vacuum, for it does not fit the every-day context in which most Africans now live. The modern African reality is one in which many traditions and customs have died out to the extent that they cannot now be properly recovered, while "modern" and western ways have not been fully established. In a context neither wholly modern nor wholly ancient, a majority of Africans live with a daily reality of grinding poverty in which clean water, food and the basic

2: Second Phase: "Incarnation"
The next phase of African theology sought a Christianity more deeply and authentically rooted in African soil. One of the ways this task was undertaken was to research the traditional African religions of the various ethnic groups from which the African theologians arose. Since many of them were second or third generation Christians by this time, it necessitated a considerable adjustment process and the pursuit of research methodologies more familiar to anthropologists than to theologians, but in contrast to anthropologists the African theologians had the advantage of knowledge of the indigenous languages as their own mother tongues.

In 1928, the young Léopold Sédar Senghor left his home in Senegal to study in Paris. Disillusioned by the ill-treatment of Africans in France and its colonies, he joined with his friend Aimé Césaire in 1929 to found a review called L'Etudiant noir, which proclaimed the principle of «négritude» (Guibert 1962, 15). The «négritude» movement sought to revalue the thought and culture of traditional Africa (see Mudimbe 1988, 83). Disenchanted with the racism they experienced in the French Communist party in Paris, the négritude group eventually broke with many aspects of

culled from GUARDIAN, March 29, 2004

It is not just the silver jubilee of the reign of Oba Erediauwa the Edos celebrate. They celebrate survival. They celebrate continuity, they celebrate stability amongst other events. March 23, 1979 merely marked the day the reigning Oba ascended the throne of his forebears soon after the immediate past Oba Akenzua II joined his ancestors. On this day, both the burial and succession rites were completed.

culled from VANGUARD Sunday May 23, 2004

Nigerian newspapers have been awash with commentaries on the Benin-lfe connection since the public presentation of Omo nOba Erediauwas Memoirs on April 29. The high and the low; historians, the