It is no exaggeration to say that such a simple conception of African-centred psychology – that the term ‘African’ in African-centred psychology attains its key objective if it has become redundant – is perhaps the most important idea a psychology student, teacher or researcher will come to hold. Along with the idea of African-centred psychology as a way of seeing from somewhere, it is certainly the single most significant idea about psychology I have arrived at since I began my career as a university teacher and researcher.

In comparison to psychologists, philosophers are often keener to trouble how we think through such a thing as ‘thinking from Africa’. You do not necessarily have to plough through Kwame Appiah, Angela Davis, Cheikh Anta Diop, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Paulin Hountondji, Adrian Piper, Leopold Senghor, Cornel West, Kwasi Wiredu and the many other philosophers who have arrived at this reference- frame-altering notion. (Of course, you can also seek help in the works of well-known names – Hannah Arendt, Aristotle, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Rene Descartes, Michel Foucault, Plato, or Jean-Paul Sartre – but my suspicion is that they will not have a ready answer for you.) I propose that a simple but consciousness-shifting insight such as this is not to be found in any of the abstruse philosophy books you might read. Coming to consciousness about Africa in psychology, as distinct from psychology in Africa, needs more than reading. It is of some help to read, do not misconstrue me. Writing and reading form a kind of discussion, certainly. That is why I have set time aside to put together this slim volume of thoughts: so that it can be read. Perhaps, in the age of Facebook, you will ‘like’ it. But I would be most satisfied if I were to be challenged about this conception.

A fuller understanding of, say, the (African) psychology of men's aggression – that is to say, of the psychology of men as always a psychology from a place of men in a place – demands that we do other kinds of work than simply reading Euroamerican psychological texts: legwork, searching, looking at the men with our own eyes, learning to see the world through the men's eyes, talking to one another, learning together, being open to each other's criticisms.