Stanley & Chukwuorji (2024) — "Sankofa: Learning From the Past to Build the Future"
- Author: J. T. Stanley & J. C. Chukwuorji
- Publication: Innovation in Aging, 8(4), igae031 (special-issue introduction)
- Date: 2024
- URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11020234/
- Type: secondary (peer-reviewed gerontology journal, editorial introduction to a special issue); neutral, academic stance
- Accessed: 2026-09-05
Extract
- Proverb given (Akan, editors' own transliteration): "so wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki" — "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot."
- The editors use sankofa — "learning from the past to build the future" — as the organizing theme for a special issue of research on aging in Sub-Saharan Africa, an academic (gerontological) rather than linguistic use of the concept.
- Stated aim: to help readers "learn about the past and present challenges and opportunities that older adults face in sub-Saharan Africa" and to inspire stakeholders "to build the future of aging in sub-Saharan Africa."
- Closing framing: researchers "should incorporate what we have already learned about aging in Sub-Saharan Africa to build the future of this region."
- This is a genuine academic (non-linguistic) adoption of the concept as an organizing metaphor — the same shape this project has already noted for other words used as titles/frames in scholarly work (cf. Woubshet's use of tizita to frame a literary-critical argument), evidence of the word's real intellectual currency beyond the popular listicle genre, independent of any "untranslatable words" marketing.
Gaps
- An editorial introduction, not a linguistic or lexicographic treatment — gives no morphological or etymological detail beyond the proverb transliteration, and does not address English-translatability at all (the concept is used, not glossed as resisting translation).
- Full special-issue contents not reviewed; only the introduction/framing article was read this session.