The Seeds of Africa’s Renaissance

Abstract

Abstract-Africa is either subject to centrifugal accounts which offer a fragmented picture of its past and potential or to centripetal examinations that tend to extrapolate their results to disconnected parts as if the continent could be melted into a single analytical unit. The purpose of this article is three-fold. The first part aims at demonstrating that even though Afro-pessimists and Afro-optimists resort to the same criteria, their insufficient correlations lead to dichotomous conclusions. The second part seeks to show that while the emergence narratives might explain occasional phenomena, they fail to include human and technological factors which reframe the African debate into the Renaissance paradigm. By focusing on digitalization and education, the third part intends to shift the academic research towards the spill-over effects of Internet in what arguably constitutes Africa's Renaissance.