Abstract:
Corruption and poverty persist in many African countries despite over two decades of implementing
the donor's good governance agenda. The ineffectiveness of western approaches in Africa makes the case for
institutional reforms based on theories that are compatible with African culture. The problem, however, is that
while there is a proliferation of western theories of governance and development, there are few well-articulated
theories emanating from African indigenous knowledge systems. In recent times, Afrocentricity has emerged
as a scientific paradigm that is based on African culture and that serves African interests. Consequently, the
objectives of the paper are to describe the characteristics of Afrocentricity and to present the Afrocentric principles
of good governance. The methodology adopted relies mainly on secondary sources. The findings show
that precolonial Africa has many democratic governance systems to learn from, and based on Africa's cultural
democracies, some Afrocentric principles of good governance are brought forward
