This book set out to provide a critical Afrocentric analysis of Du Bois and his career-long engagement with Africa. It largely accounts for Du Bois’ Eurocentric shortcomings and appraises his more Afrocentric positions. Performing this analysis required a fundamental reevaluation of his works under the lens of a number of mechanisms of analysis informed by the Afrocentric paradigm. I contextualized the experiences that shaped Du Bois’ thinking about Africa throughout his life as well as provided commentary on influential events that shaped Du Bois’ philosophy as early as his college years as well as experiences that continued to shape his opinions through the end of his life. Though I engaged with a number of Du Bois’ writings that spanned the breadth of his career, the principal scholarship of Du Bois subject to review was his book The World and Africa.

In this study I have highlighted Du Bois’ Eurocentric approaches to history in regard to African people. The significance of confronting these Eurocentric assertions is the fact that Du Bois is more or less considered the most influential African American intellectual of the twentieth century. Thus, my aim was to provide an analysis that is useful in illustrating the Eurocentric entrapments in regard to Africa and African people that have plagued even our most brilliant intellectuals. With that said, I have also demonstrated that Du Bois underwent an evolution of thought throughout his life which by his twilight years began to reveal early foundations for Afrocentric thought. I have argued that Du Bois’ analysis of African history, and subsequent promotion of Pan-African unity, is limited by his primary use of the racial paradigm juxtaposed to utilizing a cultural paradigm—though he does make some ancillary mention of culture. As such, in The World and Africa, Du Bois often makes superficial and sometimes erroneous claims about what constitutes African identity. However, Du Bois himself in some ways has expressed his discontent with the racial paradigm, and though perhaps he himself wasn't aware, was on the verge of a revolutionary new philosophy in the form of what he describes as Pan-Africa. Du Bois’ speech at the All-African People's Conference in Ghana charged Africans with the mission of unifying culturally.