cosmopolitanism must thus be received with utmost caution, if not suspicion. Its claims,
for that matter deserve further exploration.
To return to the assumption that cosmopolitanism is embarked upon by individuals out
of their own volition, the smug complacency with which this notion spreads was captured
in the Gikandi’s keynote lecture on “Rerouting the Postcolonial”. According to him,
professed African cosmopolitans are categorized as highly skilled professionals and
intellectuals who cross the borders of their countries as many times as they want and
traverse many parts of the globe at will, choosing in the process to determine which place
suits them best to live at any given time. But if there may be no contest about this
perception of African cosmopolitans, there is something particularly disturbing when
reflections on the practice of the concept aspires towards a comparative propensity as a
way of justifying the choice to be at home in the world. The proclivity toward
comparison, according to Gikandi, is evident in the embarrassment the sight of African
refugees, for instance, causes their cosmopolitan counterparts whose ego of international
travel is bruised when refugees show up at international airports with their goats, tethers
and all, in hope to be air-borne to a far away land somewhere in the West.
Such condescending reaction on the part of African cosmopolitans cannot but provoke
critical thoughts on the true intention of cosmopolitan assumptions. Once this is done, it
begins to dawn on us that the disposition of African professionals and intellectuals
towards an uncritical avowal of cosmopolitanism spells greater danger for the continent
than the benefits that it may offer. Not least because if to be at home in the world is to
relocate from Africa to the West, then to what degree can the sincerity of such wilful
cosmopolitans be taken seriously in view of the understanding that they constitute a
veritable source of Africa’s human capital base? One likely counter-response to this poser
is that here is an attempt to undermine the ideals of world citizenship in the age of
globalization. But again such counter-responses deserve to be engaged on the ground of
the disequilibrium in the pattern of world citizenship of Africans in the mould of
cosmopolitanism and that of the West, whose disposition towards being at home in the
world discriminates against choosing Africa in the wake of colonialism, except where