Among the many symbols of Akan culture, few are as profound and universally resonant as Sankofa. Depicted in the Adinkra system as a bird turning its head backward while its feet face forward, or sometimes as a stylized heart, Sankofa literally means “go back and fetch it.” It is a word, a proverb, and a worldview all at once.
But Sankofa is more than a decorative emblem; it is an existential philosophy. It teaches us that if we have forgotten something essential to our being, or if we have abandoned something that once gave us balance, there is no shame in turning back to retrieve it.
In fact, our very survival and flourishing may depend on that return. Sankofa insists that progress is not a straight line but a dance between memory and aspiration, between heritage and renewal.
In today’s Ghana and Africa at large, the Sankofa principle is not a romantic slogan but a practical necessity. To be whole, to be free, and to be authentically ourselves in a rapidly globalizing and often homogenizing world, we must return to that which makes us who we are.
Sankofa as Philosophy and Way of Life
To understand Sankofa, we must go beyond its literal translation. The idea is not simply about retrieving something to fit into our present circumstances, as one might retrieve a tool misplaced in the home. Sankofa is about restoration — about returning a missing piece to its rightful centrality in our lives so that we can be rebalanced.
For the Akan, life is understood as a continuum of relationships: between the living, the ancestors, the unborn, the natural world, and the divine. When something essential in this chain is forgotten or disrupted, equilibrium is lost. Sankofa is the act of re-membering — putting back together what has been dismembered. It means that we interpret and pursue life from the vantage point of our own worldview, not from borrowed philosophies that distort our essence.
Thus, Sankofa is not nostalgia. It is not a call to live in the past. Rather, it is a call to re-anchor the present and the future in the truths that made us whole in the first place.
Sankofa in Individual Life
On the personal level, Sankofa speaks to the times when we lose ourselves — when we stray from values, practices, or beliefs that once gave us direction. In such cases, Sankofa calls us to return.
Consider a young person raised with respect, communal responsibility, and spiritual grounding, but later swept up in the hyper-individualism of modern life. When they experience emptiness or disorientation, Sankofa reminds them: go back for what you left behind. Not to reject modern life wholesale, but to restore the lost center — the knowledge that we are because others are, that life is a shared journey, that dignity cannot be bought.
For those in diaspora, Sankofa has even deeper resonance. Many African-descended people across the world live daily with the absence of ancestral memory. For them, Sankofa becomes an act of healing — reclaiming lost names, languages, practices, and cosmologies, and placing them again at the center of identity.
Sankofa in Culture and Heritage
At the communal level, Sankofa means re-rooting ourselves in our cultural heritage as the basis of modern nationhood. Too often, we have tried to modernize by discarding culture, as though progress could only come from mimicry of Europe or America. The result has been alienation: societies that dress modern but feel hollow, nations that legislate order but lack belonging.
Sankofa argues the opposite. To modernize effectively, we must carry our culture forward, not abandon it. For example, our governance systems. Before colonialism, traditional polities like the Asante Confederacy, the Ga States, and others operated checks and balances, consultative assemblies, and complex legal traditions. Sankofa invites us to study these indigenous systems and adapt their wisdom to present democratic challenges.
In religion, it challenges us to respect African spiritual systems not as “pagan relics” but as living reservoirs of philosophy and ethics. In the arts, Sankofa fuels our music, dance, and design — not as cultural tokens for festivals, but as expressions of a living worldview.
Sankofa in National and Pan-African Life
At the national level, Ghana’s development struggles are evidence of a society adrift from its cultural compass. Our constitutions are often cut-and-paste documents modeled on Western templates. Our economic policies are overly dependent on external prescriptions. Our politics mimic the adversarial style of foreign democracies, often with divisive consequences.
Sankofa insists we must reset. Not by rejecting modern institutions outright, but by re-centering them in African philosophy. For example:
- A parliament that consults chiefs, queen mothers, and traditional councils before enacting laws.
- Economic strategies rooted in communal stewardship of land and resources, rather than extractive individualism.
- A justice system that honors restorative practices, not just punitive ones.
On the Pan-African scale, Sankofa offers a unifying principle for healing the wounds of slavery, colonialism, and fragmentation. The call to “go back and fetch it” is also the call to rebuild African unity, drawing on the philosophies of Ubuntu, Ujamaa, and Akan communalism to fashion a future that is authentically African.
Sankofa and the Centrality of Language
Perhaps nowhere is the urgency of Sankofa more evident than in education and language. For too long, our schools have treated Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagbani, Nzema, and other Ghanaian languages as optional subjects, while privileging English as the foundation of learning. This is not just a pedagogical issue — it is a structural disconnection that severs us from our cultural roots.
Because our governing institutions conduct their affairs in English, they are often unable to consult meaningfully with chiefs, elders, and traditional communities. Parliamentarians and bureaucrats, lacking fluency and eloquence in their own ethnic tongues, take the easy refuge of dismissing traditional voices as unsophisticated.
Yet it is not the traditional communities that lack sophistication; it is the western-educated elite who, by their loss of traditional parlance, have cut themselves off from the depths of African philosophy.
Sankofa demands that we restore our languages as the foundation of education. A curriculum in which indigenous languages are central, not peripheral, would bridge the disconnect between state and society.
It would allow modern governance to draw upon the vast reservoirs of wisdom and legitimacy embedded in chieftaincy and cultural institutions. Without this linguistic reset, our institutions will remain strangers to the people they claim to serve.
Sankofa and De-Neo-Colonization
The broader struggle of de-neo-colonization cannot be won without Sankofa. Political independence alone has not freed us; neo-colonial economic and cultural structures still bind us. Sankofa is the antidote.
De-neo-colonization does not mean cutting ties with the world. It means redefining our terms of engagement by returning to the foundation of who we are. If colonialism imposed alien languages, Sankofa restores our own. If it imposed foreign laws, Sankofa recalls our indigenous jurisprudence. If it distorted our spirituality, Sankofa reopens the wellsprings of African cosmology.
Only by doing this can we walk into the future as equals, not imitators. Sankofa makes us producers of knowledge, not mere consumers. It is the strategy of cultural sovereignty without which economic or political sovereignty cannot endure.
Conclusion: The Wisdom of the Bird
Sankofa is a call to courage. It takes humility to admit that we have lost something essential, and even more courage to turn back and reclaim it. But this is precisely what Ghana and Africa must do today.
The bird that looks backward while flying forward is not confused; it is wise. It is just double-checking itself to ensure that it is moving forward in the right direction in order to arrive at the desired destination.
In the realm of education, this means building a curriculum where Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagbani, Nzema, and all Ghanaian languages are not optional subjects, but the very foundation of learning. Only then can we bridge the dangerous disconnect between modern institutions and traditional communities.
Our leaders’ inability to speak in the tongues of their own people is not a sign of our people’s inadequacy but a symptom of the elites’ alienation. By failing to speak our languages, our so-called educated class fails to access the depth and sophistication of traditional wisdom.
When we say Sankofa, therefore, we do not mean simply looking back. We mean resetting. We mean restoring what belongs at the center of our worldview and life practices. We mean living from the essence of who we are, so that every step forward is anchored in our deepest truths.
Without memory, progress is shallow. Without heritage, development is fragile. Without Sankofa, freedom itself is incomplete.
Let us turn back — not to remain in the past, but to bring the past forward, to restore balance, and to walk into the future with dignity and authenticity.
