Having come this far, I would now like to give an outline of my framework for (thinking about and doing and seeing) African psychology as situated knowledge and practice. Better yet, of understanding African psychology as a set of orientations. Whereas we can be forgiven for thinking of African psychology as all of psychology in Africa, about Africans, by Africans and non-Africans, the distinguishing and anchoring element of the framework is precisely this: African psychology is a set of repertoires tied to how we orient our studies, teaching and therapeutics to individuals in Africa, and, equally important, how we orient ourselves to the world from places in Africa. African psychology is, therefore, situated knowledge and practice.

The main idea underpinning the framework is this: African psychology is composed of multiple orientations towards Africa and psychology. There are four orientations, distinguishable from each other by how you situate yourself with respect to psychology and Africa, to Africa in psychology (Ratele 2017a). The number of orientations is not definitive; the fact that there are several orientations is what matters.

The four orientations that constitute African psychology are:

Some of these orientations are readily graspable – such as the more Western-oriented psychology in Africa. As the mainstream, this Western-oriented African psychology is where the majority of psychologists are situated, and the literature produced from this orientation is too vast to reference. The other three orientations are represented by a handful of scholars (Mkhize 2004; Nwoye 2015; Semenya & Mokwena 2012).