African philosophy is used in various ways by different philosophers. Although African philosophers contribute to the enrichment of philosophy in classical disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy, a distinct feature of this literature is marked by a recurring debate on the nature of African philosophy itself.

African thought derived from oral traditions, such as those of the Yoruba or the Bantu, is the subject of modern studies in ethnophilosophy, which consist of reconstructing the worldviews of these peoples using the terms and methods of ethnology.

However, in recent decades, historians of African philosophy—such as Théophile Obenga, Grégoire Biyogo, or Hubert Mono Ndjana—have highlighted scholarly traditions that make it possible to identify three or four major periods that marked the development of thought in Africa, whether philosophical, theological, moral, or legal:

• High Antiquity: Marked by the early invention of writing in Egypt.

• Late Antiquity and the Intermediate Period: Linked to the penetration of Christianity into North Africa and Ethiopia, and later Islam into the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa.

• Modern and Contemporary Philosophy: Arising from contact with Europe and the growing influence that modern Western thought exerted on the African world, as well as this world's effort to assimilate and criticize this modernity.

Prof. BENMEZIANE Bencherki