ó d’ órí akáyín, àkàrà d’ eegun
(For the toothless, the cake becomes a bone)
— Sophie Oluwole

It is a striking dimension of North Atlantic philosophy that it has failed to find satisfaction in declaring unfamiliar or differing philosophical traditions “bad” or “poor” philosophy. Rather, it has desired a far more categorical victory in rendering these intellectual formations non-philosophical, anti-philosophical even. The Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole, in the context of a brilliantly nuanced engagement with the Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka’s Sage Philosophy Project, commented thus on this phenomenon:

Another important point which most of Oruka’s critics fail to recognize is the fact that an inadequate philosophy is philosophy still. This is why it is possible to access philosophical treatises in terms of degrees of success. A philosophy may be rationally inadequate for many reasons. It does not, by that token, become geography or mythology. Many analytic philosophers appear unable to distinguish between a work produced in a tradition different from their own and another produced completely out of philosophy. The tradition of analytic philosophers condemning continental philosophy as irrational and non-philosophical just because it does not fit within the analytic tradition can no more hold sway. Oruka’s Sage Philosophy Project was meant to demonstrate that such a move cannot be intellectually justified. Philosophers do not have to belong to the same methodological tradition even though they cannot opt out of reason.
— Sophie B. Oluwole, “Oruka’s Mission in African Philosophy”