Origins and development of scientific psychology in Afrique Noire1

This artcle charts the origins and development of scientific psychology, a Euro-American “article of export ” (Danziger, 2006, p. 271), into Afrique Noire. This ‘export ’ commodity is “an indigenous psychology rooted in a particular cultural tradition ” – European Enlightenment (Berry, 2006, p. 260). The paper develops in six major themes: scientific psychology’s emergence and growth; factors shaping it; its Africentric indigenization; recent advances in the science and applications of psychology, and Africa’s potential to contribute to the discipline. It terminates with reflective musing on the state of the discipline vis-à-vis human diversity and Africa’s marginal status in it. Afrique Noire or Africa south of the Sahara excludes North or Mediterranean Africa. It has a population of over 750 million peoples, shared unevenly amongst 47 countries, which are diverse in ecology, ethnic and linguistic composition, political structures, and other important cultural traits ( Serpell, 1984). Whereas Diop (1960) perceived a cultural unity underlying Black Africa’s huge diversity, Maquet (1972 felt “a certain common quality ” (p. 3) emerging from similar 1 This article is a substantially reconceptualized and reorganized update of “Factors influencing the development of psychology in sub-Saharan Africa ” (Nsamenang, 1995a).