«The self made man does not exist in Africa. If the motto of Europe is individualism: ‘I think therefore I am,’ Africa’s would be communalism: ‘I relate therefore I am.’ In Zulu there is a saying: ‘One is a person through others,’ or, as John Mbiti, the Kenyan theologian, put it: ‘I am because we are and, since we are, therefore I am.’ Africans know who is family and know where they come in it, both vertically and horizontally. A man without a family is no-one. He is nothing.»

Africa – altered states, ordinary miracles, Richard Dowden