In 1998, Kishore Mahbubani published a book with a provocative tittle: Can Asians Think?

Professor Mahbubani is a Singaporean and one of Asia's greatest thinkers, recognised in 2005 by the prestigious journal Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.

Mahbubani was alive to the geopolitical and racial sensitivity of the question he volunteered to investigate: "just imagine the uproar that could be caused if I went to Europe or Africa and posed the question 'Can Europeans Think?' or 'Can Africans think?'"

Mahbubani examines the Asian mind on the basis of three broad criteria: economics, politics, and culture. At the end of his soul-wrenching analysis, Mahbubani comes to the following mixed conclusion: Yes, Asians can think; No, Asians can't think; Maybe, Asians can think.

Japan was the first country in the 20th century to sit around the same economic table with countries of the West and be accepted un-condescendingly as an equal.

Before Japan, there was no economic evidence that Asians could think. Now there are more East Asian countries that have developed their economies to show the rest of the world that "Yes, Asians can think."

For more than 500 years before the Japanese turnaround, nothing happened in Asia to rival the scientific and technological progress registered by the Occident. Throughout this long torpor, Asians were clearly not thinking.

In politics, Asia has produced no theory or practice of governance to attract the envy of other peoples in the world. Surveying the whole history of Asian politics, Mahbubani's conclusion is correct: "No, Asians can't think."

There seem to be enduring attributes of Confucian and Islamic culture that animate collective life in Asia. This suggests the possibility of a unique social model in that part of the world. That Asians themselves have yet concretely to define such a model corroborates Mahbubani's doubt: "Maybe, Asians can think."

Mahbubani is Asian; we must leave him to grapple with Asian problems. We must confront our own question: Can Africans think?

There was a time when Thabo Mbeki went around preaching about an African renaissance. We were so intoxicated by Mbeki's smoke that we could not ask: Where is the evidence?

Economically, is there a single country in Africa that has done what Japan and other East Asian countries have done to warrant the answer: "Yes, Africans can think"?

It is good for an African to feel as though he is part of a people making progress, but there is a difference between feelings and evidence.

For the past 500 years the West has been producing wonders in science and technology, while Asians and Africans were asleep.

I say 500 years because it is true that Occidental civilisation was preceded by Oriental and African civilisations.

As Mahbubani correctly observes, there is now evidence that Asians have woken up from their long slumber. Have we Africans woken up? Patriotism is not enough to answer the question; we need hard facts.

Politically, we Africans have also not evolved theories or practices of modern governance that can provoke the envy of other peoples in the world. The answer is troubling and straightforward: "No, Africans cannot think."

In the cultural realm, a great deal has been said about Ubuntu as a philosophy of African life, even as there is ample evidence of African chiefs selling their own people to white slave owners from the 15th century onwards.

We Africans had been murdering each other long before the white man came to our shores. It is true that colonisers have diluted our culture, but it is mendacious patriotism to imply the existence of a pre-colonial African cultural purism.

The foregoing notwithstanding, there is room in the future for Ubuntu to inform and shape a unique African character that might shine brightly among the glittering colours of the human kaleidoscope. Hence the doubtfulness of my judgment on the cultural aspect of our question: "Maybe, Africans can think."

Resorting to colonialism as an excuse when called upon to examine oneself comes across as laziness when other previously colonised peoples elsewhere have made visible progress.

When you pose the question "Can Africans think?", expect a violent response from African pseudo-patriots. Violence is forceful, but it will never be more forceful than truth. Always remember that the brother who loves you is he who points out the weaknesses you must rectify. Such love is called critical intimacy.