Culture is basically the beliefs, customs, roots, identity, settings, and cumulative
knowledge associated with a particular society or community. Every
community or country in the world has its own distinctively unique
culture that defines it. For instance, when one is born, he/she is given
a name and grows in a given settings. That setting, in summary, is that person's
roots as he/she will forever look up to their beliefs.
One good thing with culture is that it has a certain amount of beauty in it. Through art, food, music, language, fashion, and wildlife, cultures are recognised and associated with. Traditionally, South Africa is widely known for its well built auditoriums - where artists from all over perform different kinds of music. Kenya identifies and takes pride in her food delicacies (fish) and wildlife. Nigeria is known for its Afro-movie dramas and fashion and so on. With these, culture has brought about entertainment to many who embrace its beauty.
Nevertheless, there are still certain cultural practices - on the other hand - that don't add
value; yet, Africans are still blinded to them. Cultural practices such as Female Genital Mutilation, condemnation of the girl-child education, women not allowed to take
leadership stands, wearing of animal skins, fighting over
livestock cattle rustling) etc. have proven to be harmful rather than helpful to Africans. These retrogressive acts have seen
Africa lag behind; and honestly speaking, they are unacceptable and
should be dealt with amicably. Continue...
Thanks to technology, many cultures have been revolutionized in terms
of sharing innovative information, exchange of languages, art, online
women empowerment movements and consequently spurred
development. Actually, different cultures are nowadays known either
through social media or other useful online resources.You can imagine, to
this era, there are some people who really don't know anything about a
mobile phone. These set of people say they don't want to be deprived, or rather replace
their taboos with technology or even instill some sense of modernity in
their existing beliefs. Far too often many are not willing to give up on
these harmful acts because they fear negative repercussions in doing
so.
I act as a Volunteer in a community where the people are not
development-minded, and I don't believe it's their fault.What I do as a
leader is to target the youth of the area - Samburu. I mentor them to be futuristic and optimistically aggressive, and to stand up for their communities in order to reduce the
stereotypes.Youths in this area have the responsibility of talking
with their elders more than a foreigner. Hence, they could try to negotiate on those
unbecoming practices if at all they want to experience change and
prosperity on the land.
As future leaders, we have the responsibility of standing with our communities and guiding them in the way forward. This could be achieved through several skill building workshops, encouraging intercultural dialogue and creating a common understanding between the youth of different nationalities and religions. Technology would always be there to assist. There you have it, it is out in the open!
Teresa Abila,
YALI Forum NC,
Kenya.
modernisation has it benefit on how it help many people by changing their wast thoughts as those who think that ,even to use phones is not good but we don't have to ignore how culture was very useful;through it children were been educated though had good education.
ReplyDeleteBad manners sometimes attract young, typicaly Burundian, through modernisation like the short clothing(dressing).As well as modernisation is needful we have to follows some practice which build our countries as is our culture
Yes Janvier NIBARUTA, we agree with your position. As long as modernisation is necessary, we should not throw away certain useful aspects of our culture... This means we have to maintain a balance between culture and modernisation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Teresa can help us explain better how we can achieve this.
We should not throw away our cultures but its necessary for us to take away those that dont add value on us in this age. There's beauty in every culture,lets embrace our diversity and with technological advancements,share widely.
ReplyDeletesome cultures are retrogressive to the develoment of the African continent.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, local communities hold on to some retrogressive practices and call them culture/tradition eg denying girl child education, wearing of animal skin, forbidden the use of technological gadgets among others. The so-called protectors of these practices are either ignorant to embrace progress for their community or are deliberately keeping their community into perpetual backwardness for their own selfish gains.
ReplyDeletemy reply... http://yaliforum.blogspot.com/2015/03/culture-and-modernisation-of-african.html
ReplyDelete