The notion of centre, of centredness, or what Molefi Kete Asante (1991) refers to as centricity, is key to my efforts to contribute towards African-centred psychology. In his article ‘The Afrocentric idea in education’ published in The Journal of Negro Education, Asante writes: ‘centricity refers to a perspective that involves locating students within the context of their own cultural references so that they can relate socially and psychologically to other cultural perspectives’ (1991: 171). I have come to see how I have walked some of the same paths walked by other black scholars in African countries and in America, like Asante; I feel cheated, I am afraid, for not having known the notions of centricity and Afrocentricity when I was struggling with my voice, perspective and sense of alienation while teaching psychology, between October 1996 and April 2004.

In the same article Asante observes ‘that the most productive method of teaching any student is to place his or her group within the center of the context’ (1991: 171). In my view this is a self-evident truth, and hence something with which I totally agree – the utter significance of locating a student and his or her values and material structures of living at the centre of the context of learning. Learning is decidedly easier if students can relate the new content to something in their lives. It is hard to see something in your mind if you cannot see it, and even more so if you have no view of yourself. As Asante says in his book An Afrocentric Manifesto, Afrocentricity ‘is a theory of agency, the idea that African people must be viewed and view themselves as agents rather than spectators to historical revolution and change’ (2007: 17).

What I bring to psychology with the idea of being centred is that it is not applicable only to teaching and learning. A centred psychology, a centring of Africa in psychology, applies to research too. The first thing you start to appreciate when you wish to conduct a study from an African-centred psychological perspective is that the least alienating of light is cast on your topic and your participants if you place what philosophers refer to as lived experiences of the participants – their personal accounting of their own experiences – at the centre of your study.