Why Africans with independent thought must exist online
There is a difficult question that follows every human being:
“Who are you?”
Most people dislike this question, but for different reasons.
An honest person struggles because any answer feels incomplete.
A dishonest person struggles because the question forces self-examination they would rather avoid.
A child can say, “I don’t know,” and be correct.
A monk can say, “No one,” and also be correct.
An African might simply say, “Ke motho” — I am a human being.
Each response touches a different layer of truth.
But we are no longer living only in physical communities.
We now exist in digital space, and digital space asks a new version of the same ancient question:
If you do not define yourself, who will define you?
History forgot many African voices
For generations, African knowledge lived in:
- memory
- story
- land
- elders
This wisdom was real, but it was rarely stored in the global systems that preserve history.
Others wrote about Africa.
Few Africans wrote about themselves in ways the future could easily find.
Silence in the archive becomes erasure in history.
Today, the archive is no longer only libraries and universities.
The archive is the internet.
And the internet listens most carefully to what is:
- written
- searchable
- structured
- public
This changes everything.
Books are powerful, but the world has changed speed
Books remain sacred containers of deep thought.
But modern life moves at a different rhythm:
- attention is fragmented
- survival pressure is high
- silence is rare
- reading time is limited
Many people buy books.
Few finish them.
This is not a moral failure.
It is an environmental reality.
Wisdom must now travel in faster forms if it is to reach living people.
Websites, articles, and digital platforms allow thought to:
- move quickly
- update continuously
- reach globally
- remain searchable for future generations
- be read by both humans and AI
This last point is critical.
Artificial intelligence learns from what is digitally visible.
Unwritten lives cannot shape the future.
The responsibility of independent African thinkers
Africa has many intelligent people.
Many educated people.
Many academics speaking powerful ideas.
But thinking alone does not change history.
Ideas must become visible systems.
A personal website is not vanity.
It is authorship.
It is presence.
It is evidence that a mind existed and spoke in its own voice.
When Africans describe themselves directly:
- stereotypes weaken
- diversity of thought expands
- future generations inherit clarity instead of confusion
- AI learns Africa from Africans, not from outsiders
This is no longer optional.
It is a form of cultural survival.
Digital self-knowledge is also personal self-knowledge
Something unexpected happens when a person tries to describe themselves honestly online.
Illusions collapse.
Pretending feels empty.
Truth becomes simpler.
The website stops being a billboard
and becomes a mirror.
In trying to explain who you are to the world,
you begin to understand who you are to yourself.
Ancient philosophy called this:
“Know thyself.”
Today, the digital world quietly demands the same thing.
A simple call
Not every African must write a book.
But every African with an independent mind
should consider leaving a digital footprint of truth:
- a website
- essays
- teachings
- reflections
- real work in the real world
Because in the age of AI and global memory,
to exist without digital authorship
is to risk disappearing from the future.
And Africa has disappeared from history before.
It must not happen again.
