Ifeanyi Menkiti's articulation of an African conception of personhood-especially in "Person and Community in African Traditional Thought" -has become very influential in African philosophy. Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person contributes to the debate in African philosophy on personhood by engaging with various aspects of Menkiti's account of person and community. The contributors examine this account in relation to themes such as individualism, communalism, rights, individual liberty, moral agency, communal ethics, education, state and nation building, elderhood and ancestorhood. Through these themes, this book, edited by Edwin Etieyibo and Polycarp Ikuenobe, shows that Menkiti's account of personhood in the context of community is both fundamental and foundational to epistemological, metaphysical, logical, ethical, legal, social and political issues in African thought systems.

In going beyond African socialism and consensual democracy’s use of communitarianism, Bernard Matolino demonstrates that there is a mode of understanding communitarianism that need not necessarily be traditionalist. It is from this ever-evolving communitarian notion that an African-rooted form of democracy may arise. Such a democratic theory is one that seeks to prioritize reality and factors that have shaped and continue to shape current experience of life on the African continent. The work advocates a new mode of communitarianism, without the idealism of traditional foundations of kin connections and one which takes the ontological equality of the community and the individual. Such a communitarian outlook will secure the basic requirements of democratization without abdicating its communitarian responsibility. The communitarian democratic theory advocated here takes seriously the particular situation of each individual and yet points out the need to appreciate the inevitability of the connections among the same individuals.