African Time

African Time

During our wedding over 15 years ago, my late father-in-law walked in through the side door into waiting room where the wedding party was awaiting to be ushered into the main reception hall. Without much hesitation and as if to respond to the anxiety inside me that we were over one hour late – “Africans have time, white people have watches”. While this did not offer much consolation, I reflected a bit on the thought that we did not have to be anxious because “we have time”.

I almost forgot about this thought from my father-in-law, until a couple of days ago during a dinner with two American friends. One them – Benjamin made the point that his experiences in Uganda in the last 5 years or so has thought that Ugandans and consequently Africans invest “more time into relationships” than make commitments to be “on time”. So Benjamin will have us believe that rather than keep our commitments to an appointment, we kept our commitments to relationships.

Well, my immediate thought was that this was another justification to the some of the bad habits that some of us have developed. People will commit to a meeting and conveniently show up late with all sorts of excuses – “well you know, it rained...”, “the jam (as in traffic jam) was heavy,” and of course “it’s African time”. The truth is that it is neither African time nor bad weather; it is people showing up late.

My experience – from Kigali to Cape Town – is that you run into folks who do not intend to keep their appointments. I have had account managers who will sit at their desks 15 minutes to their appointments and act very surprised when reminded of their meeting commitment at the top of the hour. 

So what is African time?  Why are we so casual to keeping time? Why is “African time” the only time that is inconsistent with keeping our commitments?. According to Wikipedia “African time (or Africa time) is the perceived cultural tendency, in most parts of Africa, toward a more relaxed attitude to time. This is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, about tardiness in appointments, meetings and events.^[1] This also includes the more leisurely, relaxed, and less rigorously-scheduled lifestyle found in African countries, especially as opposed to the more clock-bound pace of daily life in Western countries.^[2] As such it is similar to time orientations in some other non-Western culture regions”. Others say “The appearance of a simple lack of punctuality or a lax attitude about time in Africa, may instead reflect a different approach and method in managing tasks, events, and interactions. African cultures are often described as "polychronic,"^[3][4] which means people tend to manage more than one thing at a time rather than in a strict sequence. Personal interactions and relationships are also managed in this way, such that it is not uncommon to have more than one simultaneous conversation.^[5] An African "emotional time consciousness" has been suggested which contrasts with Western "mechanical time consciousness".^[6]

I believe somewhere in the positions above is that real truth and that is to there is no such thing as African time. If anything, “African time” falls in the same waste basket of all the excuses we give for why service delivery is at a standstill. My barber who we made an appointment with us in Kampala not so recently, showed up a full hour late and of course reminded my 3 kids and I about the morning drizzle as his excuse. My 11 year old promptly reminded us that that was the same thing a very high ranking government official did during a visit to their school. And because the official was very senior, no phones or newspapers were allowed. My son and the rest of the school were kept waiting for over two hours. But in that case, the senior government official did not give any explanations. People in attendance were telepathically informed that it was “African Time”.

And as African Literary prize winner, Victor Dlamini reminds us “There is truly nothing more annoying that to receive an invitation to an up-market event and, when you arrive at the venue, there is hardly anyone there, not even the host. Invariably, if you bother to call them to find out why they are late, they tell you that they are around the corner, or the perennial favorite, they are five minutes away. Of course, that always turns out to be untrue and you end up waiting and wondering why they did not just choose a time they could manage”

However, the good news is that we can change. We can decide as individuals to take responsibility for our actions. We can decide to be on time regardless of the weather or geographic location you find yourself. After all, as we are often reminded, “we are a product of our choices and not our circumstances” – this is true for us as it is for those who make commitments and keep them.

Francis Egbuson

Kampala, Uganda

2007