Journal of Psychology in Africa, 2019
Vol. 29, No. 4, X–XX, https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2019.1654202
© 2019 Africa Scholarship Development Enterprize
SPECIAL SECTION: Advancing the research scholarship of Bame Nsamenang
Introduction to the special section by the guest editor
Robert Serpell
Department of Psychology, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia
Author email: robertnserpell@gmail.com
Bame Nsamenang’s contributions to scholarship on
human development in Africa were grounded in the
epistemological insight that psychology is a reflexive
enterprise, and that its application in Africa demands
according priority to a cultural heritage deeply embedded
in the social circumstances in which children are raised.
While those circumstances change over time and are
powerfully impacted by encounters with people of other
sociocultural origins, to understand how African children
develop into African adults demands an Africentric focus.
His own “theorisation of human development [was]
grounded in primary local research, enriched by reflection
on personal experience, critical reading of contemporary
Western psychology, and wide-ranging review of African
culture, philosophy, history and politics” (Serpell, in
press). The social ontogenetic perspective elaborated in
Nsamenang’s (1992) seminal book “Human development
in cultural context” informed several processes over the
course of his vibrant international career. These continue
to thrive in the scholarly literature, inspiring new research
questions and research methods, as well as challenging
policy proposals and practices by applied scientists and
policymakers regarding appropriate ways of designing
educational, health, and social services for children in
Africa. This commemorative section of the Journal of
Psychology in Africa illustrates these various ways in
which Nsamenang’s enduring influence is felt and will
continue to be manifested in years to come.
Seth Oppong’s article builds on Nsamenang’s
(2007) critique of most psychology in Africa as having
been narrowly constrained by its connection with
colonialism. He reviews several different formulations
of the paradoxically self-defeating tendency of African
scholarship to deny African cultural beliefs and practices a
respected place in the interpretation of African behaviour
and experience. He further argues that the exogenous
influence of epistemological violence is overlain with
current institutional practices within the continent that
sustain the hegemonic marginalisation of indigenous
cultural resources by Western traditions under the guise
of globalisation. Oppong challenges indigenous African
scholars to critically examine their own practices for
symptoms of the condition termed negromarchy by the
African-American scholar Thomas (1971): “a form of
confusion and doubt of self-worth in an African … due to
dependency on or the use of standards and definitions from
White American culture” (cited in Jackson 1976, p. 25). He
Journal of Psychology in Africa is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group)
proposes several complementary, strategic ways in which
African scholarship can promote a “healing process”:
• the inclusion of more African content in psychology
syllabi implemented at African universities;
• greater emphasis by African journals on accuracy
relative to methodological rigour as a criterion for
accepting manuscripts for publication;
• less emphasis by African university administrators
on international citation indicators as a measure
of research output quality when assessing African
scholars for faculty promotion; and
• more nuanced reference by African moderators of
public opinion to global university rankings that rely
on publication counts in international databases.
Through these strategic interventions, Oppong calls
for the systematic promotion of African “epistemic
authenticity with the view to ensuring that the conceptions
of reality … reflect authentic African socio-cultural
realities but not an imposed or self-imposed contrived
reality borrowed or derived from the West” (p. 298).
In the second article, Therese Tchombe, a long-term
collaborator with Nsamenang, presents a complement to
Nsamenang’s social ontogenetic perspective on African
children’s development, in the form of her theoretical
construct of mediated mutual reciprocity. Drawing on
focus group discussions with young people and their
parents in widely dispersed communities across the diverse
nation of Cameroon, Tchombe notes a wide consensus
“that despite the challenges and adversities faced by these
children, their ingenuity, resilience and cultural assets play
an important role in mediating positive outcomes” (p. 301).
Given the prevalence in African contexts of participatory
rather than explicitly instructional learning, she argues
that major Western theories that recognise the active role
of the learner fall short of acknowledging “the fact that
the child is the main driver of his/her own development
and learning” (p. 301). Building on Nsamenang’s theme
of indigenous African socialisation as priming children
for the emergence of the next phase of their development,
Tchombe’s construct of mediated mutual reciprocity
(MMR) articulates a theoretical account of how “African
parenting values and practices foster children’s self-
education in participative learning processes in their
families and communities, especially in the peer cultures
of early childhood” (p. 306). Rather than construing adults
as shaping the development of the child, “MMR rather
views the child as the one who initiates his or her own
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development and then actively stimulates the adult in
mutual mediation and reciprocity” (p. 306).
The third article (by Sheina Lew-Levy, Alyssa
Crittenden, Adam Boyette, Ibrahim Mabulla, Barry
Hewlett, and Michael Lamb) is focused on learning-
through-participation in economic work by children and
adolescents in two widely geographically separated African
hunter-gatherer societies. It presents detailed, quantitative
observational data, supplemented with qualitative
interviews. The predominant form of socioeconomic
organisation in sub-Saharan Africa, including the Bamenda
grasslands of Cameroon – where Nsamenang grew up
and conducted his initial field research published in
collaboration with Lamb (Nsamenang & Lamb 1993) – is
sedentary agriculture or animal husbandry. However, the
forager societies that hosted the present study:
… primarily rely on non-domesticated resources;
are fiercely egalitarian in the sense that there is
no inherited hierarchy according to age, and little
differentiation of status according to sex …[and]
value autonomy in the sense that individuals
rarely direct each other or impose their will on one
another. (pp. 309–310)
While ecological variations between the two settings
were predictably matched by differences in particular
patterns of child participation in economic activity, the
study found that in both sites:
… children were rarely assigned chores. Children
decided whether to forage, and with whom. Adults
respected children’s decisions to forage with or
without adults, even if these decisions countered
normative foraging group compositions…Taken
together, these findings demonstrated that the
cultural value of autonomy shared by many
foragers is evident in the childrearing practices of
Hadza and BaYaka parents...Whereas Nsamenang
noted the indigenous African social ontogenetic
paradigm “is premised not on an independent
or autonomous frame; its foundational principle
is an interdependent or relational script”, [this
study’s] data instead suggested that for Hadza and
BaYaka foragers, individual autonomy precedes
interdependence, even as foragers cooperate in all
aspects of life. (p. 315)
However, while respecting their autonomy:
… adults were attuned to children’s skills, and
provided opportunities for learning through intent
participation rather than explicit instruction …
While learning was primarily in the domain
of subsistence, children also developed an
understanding of cultural values and norms of
behaviour, such as the sexual division of labour and
autonomy. (p. 315)
The authors conclude with the recommendation that
“[f]uture studies should consider differences in subsistence
and environment when investigating learning cross-
culturally” (p. 316).
Widespread opportunities for the participative learning
processes highlighted by Nsamenang as characteristic of
African childhood settings are afforded by indigenous
Serpell
games and songs. As Serpell & Nsamenang (2014) noted,
they represent a somewhat neglected fund of knowledge
for enriching the quality of Early Childhood Development
Care and Education (ECDCE) programming. The article
by Godfrey Ejuu, set in Uganda, takes up the challenge of
documenting such games and articulating their affordances
for psychomotor, cognitive, and socioemotional learning.
Despite the absence of formal instructional guides or
adult supervision, the games that he describes are clearly
constituted by rules, adherence to which is mediated by
consensus among participants. Drawing on Nsamenang’s
Africentric philosophy, Ejuu reflects on how indigenous
games represent a significant element of African
cultural tradition, worthy of international recognition
as a distinctive regional contribution to world heritage.
Moreover, if local traditional games were incorporated in
the curriculum of Early Childhood Education programmes
as a pedagogical resource, their familiarity to elders in the
children’s home community might enhance the depth of
mutual understanding between parents and teachers.
Nsamenang’s Africentric commitment extended
beyond theory into application through
… a critical engagement with policy proposals
and practices by applied social scientists,
policymakers and educators regarding appropriate
ways of designing ECDCE services in Africa,
and a sustained and productive commitment to
nurturing endogenous African scholarship on child
development and education. (Serpell, in press)
The article by Alan Pence, another long-term
collaborator with Nsamenang, documents the context
and impact of their well-known contributions to applied
developmental psychology over an extended time period
across the African continent, notably in ECDCE policy
development and in tertiary education’s engagement with
the field of child development. Noting the remarkable
cumulative impact of the Early Childhood Development
Virtual University (ECDVU) initiative over the first two
decades of the 21st century, Pence also illustrates regional
progress on a number of other indicators; including the
number of African tertiary colleges and universities
offering programmes on ECD/ECE, and the number of
African-led ECD publications appearing in the scholarly
literature. Regarding the content of that literature, he
touches on a topic close to concerns expressed in the
article by Oppong, noting a dynamic tension around the
insider-outsider axis, between universalistic generalisation
and local validation, expressed in policy, curriculum and
practice as a still enduring tension between, on the one
hand search for and promotion of single “best practices”
and on the other hand support for diversification and local
relevance. Nsamenang, as Pence notes, was a resolutely
persistent advocate of endogenously generated curriculum
and local accountability. In both theory and practice his
work served as a buttress against the power of invasive
intervention, and manifested its own power to endure and
expand through advocacy and professional education.
The last contribution to this commemorative section is
a review by Dabie Nabuzoka of the Handbook of Applied
Developmental Science in Sub-Saharan Africa published
 Legacy of A. Bame Nsamenang
in 2017, and edited by Amina Abubakar and the late Fons
van de Vijver. In addition to a chapter by Nsamenang on
“Doing human development scholarship in Africa within
the crosscurrents of Euro-Western intellectual cascade”,
the handbook includes 19 chapters by other authors, and
as the editors observe:
… there is a good representation of African-
based scholars and of scholars who have actively
engaged in research in Africa over a prolonged
period. The authors of the different chapters bring
a wealth of experience from field work in Africa,
thus providing an in-depth understanding of the
developmental issues from an African perspective.
(p. x {PLEASE PROVIDE PAGE NUMBER FOR
THIS DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE BOOK)
Nabuzoka provides a concise summary of individual
chapters and concludes that the book:
… contributes to the development of African
Psychology by illustrating the link between various
aspects of the African context and general and
psychological development, and covering a wide
range of African-based research. Methodological
considerations in making such links between
context and psychological functioning, and state-of-
the-art strategies for maximising the developmental
potential of children in Sub-Saharan Africa are
carefully illustrated and discussed, together with
some policy and practical implications. (p. 336)
Collectively, the various contributions to this section
illustrate the multiple implications for research and
practice of the publications by Bame Nsamenang, whose
creative energy has inspired a movement that seems
poised to endure and grow, affirming the value of African
indigenous ideas and practices for understanding and
supporting child development both in Africa and elsewhere
around the world.
Although Nsamenang had a fluent oral command of
French, almost all of his publications were in English. The
recent publication of the long-awaited French translation
of the 2011 Handbook (Nsamenang, Tchombe & Sabatier
2019) adds a welcome layer of accessibility of writings
about his Africentric perspective for a francophone
readership in Africa.
291
ORCID
Robert Serpell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6902-1780
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