The African continent was often denied recognition as the home of philosophical schools, traditions or concepts – in part because African languages were considered too underdeveloped to form abstract concepts or grasp complex relationships. This was one of the arguments used by the European colonial powers to introduce the respective colonial languages as lingua franca and languages of education in their colonies, which led to the marginalization of the indigenous languages in many African countries – in political discourse, in the public sphere, but also in science, art and philosophy. It is not least against this background that controversial debates are being held in Africa about the significance of language for philosophizing, the importance of philosophizing in African languages (also as a contribution to decolonization) and the possibilities and limits of such an undertaking. The lecture traces some positions in the debates from the past and present, from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Kwasi Wiredu to Chike Jeffers and the positions represented in our lecture series in the summer semester 2025, and attempts to give an outlook on future research.