In Chapters 4 and 5, I discussed two prominent aspects of Afrocentricity, namely history and culture, and their significance for the reconceptualization of an Afrocentric development paradigm. Only European–North American history and culture informed the Truman development paradigm in the aftermath of World War II, as discussed in Chapter 3, and this model was a dismal failure in Africa because it was founded on erroneously universalized predictions grounded on modernization theory, which further deracinated Africans from their history and culture. This chapter discusses the role of African agency as the third aspect of Afrocentricity important for the reimagination of an Afrocentric development trajectory. The chapter examines Pan-Africanism and African nationalism as important ideological frameworks that undergird African agency to combat European domination. The chapter argues that the future of Africa can only be attained when Africans themselves act in their own best interests. Therefore, Africans must think, plan, implement and be the beneficiaries of their own development plans. They may not be reduced to puppets of the European games of conquest but should take charge of their own lives and map out their own futures.

It is important to note that the advent of modernity, which began in the late fifteenth century, ushered in European domination over Africa and dislocated Africans from their historical and cultural patterns of life, and converted Africans into European subjects. The domination of Africans from that time on set in motion the processes for Africa's dismemberment and loss of its own agency. As I have highlighted in Chapter 4, Africa was stripped of ownership of its contributions to world civilization and came to be considered a place occupied by sub-human savages without a history or culture. This was part of the European pattern of denigrating Africans to elevate the European human experience as the superior model for all. Thus, the invention of racism from the fifteenth century onwards became a strategy and a device to classify human beings in terms of their descriptive physical qualities and to create hierarchies, placing Africans in the lowest echelons of humanity. This racist claim was then used to justify the colonial invasion of Africa and the overthrow of African kings, making them and their people obedient subjects.