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+--- Thread: Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems (/thread-18678.html)
Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems - Syne - Aug 31, 2025
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-auron-macintyre-show/what-if-time-moves-backward-why-african-time-clashes-with-western-systems
Auron MacIntyre dives into a recent viral video addressing Africa’s strange concept of time.
Language, religion, and culture can be barriers that prevent people from different backgrounds from understanding one another. But time — the ongoing flow of moments from the past, through the present, and into the future — is something that unites us in its universality, right?
Not necessarily.
It turns out that time is also subject to interpretation.
“What if I told you that for many African societies, the concept of the future doesn't exist and that instead of time moving forwards, time actually moves backwards,” said Instagram user @mumbipoetry in a viral August 18 post.
Quoting Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti, she says, “time is a two-dimensional phenomenon with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future,” where the present encompasses “the now, the recent past, and the immediate future,” while “the vast endless past [is] where all events eventually go on to live forever.” But because “time is made up of events” and must be “experienced in order to be real,” the future “cannot constitute part of time” because it has neither events nor experience to legitimize it.
A year isn’t measured by Earth’s rotations around the sun; it’s measured by events. “A year is only over when those four seasons have taken place, so a year could take 365 days, 390 days — it doesn’t matter,” she explained, contrasting it with the Western world’s concept of time, where it’s treated as a “commodity” that can be “spent, saved, wasted, or lost.”
This two-dimensional understanding of time is why many African languages “don’t have a word to describe the distant future,” she explains.
The African notion of time is a real head-scratcher for Westerners, who are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future.
This difference, says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, is “so radical it makes cooperation basically impossible.”
Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?
“If you do not have a future, how do you understand planning for something? How do you understand a lower time preference that would allow you to build civilization? How do you understand denying yourself today so that you can thrive tomorrow?” Auron asks.
Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?
“People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they're going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”
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RE: Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems - C C - Aug 31, 2025
(Aug 31, 2025 01:01 AM)Syne Wrote: https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-auron-macintyre-show/what-if-time-moves-backward-why-african-time-clashes-with-western-systems
[...] Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?
[...] Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?
“People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they're going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”...
I've heard similar about Brazil, that there's a lackadaisical attitude about showing up on time. Thanks to decoloniality, internal efforts to change that in the applicable countries will probably be in vain, since it's an intellectual prescription to de-Westernize all the more.
African time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_time
EXCERPTS: African time (or Africa time) is the perceived cultural tendency in parts of Africa and the Caribbean toward a more relaxed attitude to time. This is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, about tardiness in appointments, meetings and events. This also includes the more leisurely, relaxed, and less rigorously scheduled lifestyle found in African countries, especially as opposed to the more clock-bound pace of daily life in Western countries.
[...] African cultures are often described as "polychronic", which means people tend to manage more than one thing at a time rather than in a strict sequence. Personal interactions and relationships are also managed in this way, such that it is not uncommon to have more than one simultaneous conversation. An African "emotional time consciousness" has been suggested, which contrasts with Western "mechanical time consciousness".
[...] Self-criticism and commentary.The concept of African time has become a key topic of self-criticism in modern Africa. According to one Ghanaian writer,
One of the main reasons for the continuing underdevelopment of our country is our nonchalant attitude to time and the need for punctuality in all aspects of life. The problem of punctuality has become so endemic that lateness to any function is accepted and explained off as 'African time.'
In October 2007, an Ivorian campaign against African time, backed by President Laurent Gbagbo, received international media attention when an event called "Punctuality Night" was held in Abidjan to recognize business people and government workers for regularly being on time. The slogan of the campaign is "'African time' is killing Africa – let's fight it."Reuters reported that "organizers hope to heighten awareness of how missed appointments, meetings or even late buses cut productivity in a region where languid tardiness is the norm". It was remarked that this year's winner, legal adviser Narcisse Aka—who received a $60,000 villa in recognition of his punctuality—"is so unusually good at being punctual that his colleagues call him 'Mr White Man's Time'".
Some Western tourists in the Caribbean "...become infuriated if locals don't respond as promptly or as efficiently to every request as employees or service personnel do back home".
RE: Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems - confused2 - Aug 31, 2025
In Greece the length of time it took to actually get a meal used to raise my blood temperature to near boiling point - I don't know if it was a game played with tourists or an actual Greek thing. Locally we have 'directly' ("dreckly") which means anything but 'directly' .. something like manyana but without the same sense of urgency. The area has kept up with the times and "dreckly" is less prevalent than it was 40 years ago.
RE: Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems - Syne - Aug 31, 2025
I wonder if this sense of time isn't a contributing factor in under-cultivated land:
Agriculture in Africa holds immense potential, as the continent possesses 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land, enough to feed itself and the world. However, this potential is hindered by poor infrastructure, limited access to finance, outdated farming practices, and a lack of mechanization, leading to significant food import costs. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aims to unlock growth by increasing intra-African trade and investment in the sector.
- Google AI