Teju kareem , Niyi Coker and The Shanghai Cultured Exec

My recent visit to The Africa Centre, London, and the subsequent encounter between the poetic and the philosophical, left me with profound reflections on the urgency of cultural continuity, intellectual ownership, and the responsibility of our generation to preserve the soul of African civilisation beyond performance and symbolism.

What became increasingly evident throughout the evening is that culture can no longer exist merely as memory or nostalgia. It must be institutionally protected, intellectually documented, economically valued, and globally projected. Our stories deserve permanence. Our folklore deserves both legal and moral protection. Our heritage deserves structured transmission to future generations.

This is why the growing work surrounding intellectual property and cultural preservation remains critically important. The efforts being championed by Oyinkansola Fawehinmi, popularly known as Foza Doza, represent far more than advocacy; they constitute a necessary awakening. A reminder that intellectual property is not only about commerce or ownership in the conventional sense, but also about safeguarding identity, protecting indigenous knowledge systems, preserving folklore, and ensuring that African creativity is neither erased nor exploited without recognition or value returning to its people.

Equally inspiring was the encounter with the Poetic Tempo collective — a gathering of young minds, largely within their twenties and thirties, intellectually grounded, academically exposed, socially mobile, yet deeply engaged with questions of identity, belonging, and African consciousness. Their presence alone was testimony that the African DNA continues to evolve, question, expand, and assert itself globally.

Nostalgia, therefore, is no longer sufficient. What matters now is reality — confronting it honestly, intellectually, philosophically, and culturally.

One of the evening’s most compelling conversations revolved around the phrase “Black British.” The question surfaced repeatedly:

Do we drop the “Black,” or do we drop the “British”?
Which identity do we preserve? Which do we foreground?
Or do we insist on holding both simultaneously?

The discussion was layered, extensive, and intellectually generous. No contribution was wasted. What became unmistakably apparent was that the African mind remains active, probing, restless, and alive.

Africa is not static.
Africa is mobile.
Africa is thinking.

And within that movement, her voice continues to shine brighter across the world.

We must continue to question.
We must continue to affirm.
We must continue to own what is originally ours — defined by us, not defined for us.

Special appreciation goes to a good friend and colleague, Idris Ogungbe, whose calm intellectual disposition added depth to the engagement. Kudos also to Tobi, a new acquaintance encountered through the evening’s exchange, alongside several others whose contributions enriched the dialogue. Important recognition must also go to Fadil of The Africa Centre for facilitating and elegantly concluding the evening.

What many of us appeared to agree upon, directly or indirectly, is that purity must be embraced — but always with wisdom and common sense. Africa and Aluta continue.

Perhaps most importantly, the integrity of those who carry African culture across borders — or who hold custodianship of it within the continent itself — must rise above pettiness. The custodians of culture must embody the dignity, discipline, clarity, and elevation that the culture itself deserves.

Perhaps this stands as one of the defining cultural responsibilities of our time: to ensure that future generations inherit not fragments of who we were, but a protected, documented, intellectually defended, and proudly owned legacy of who we are.

— Dr. Teju Kareem