  Other nuanced characterizations and examinations of trends in philosophizing on the African continent have been developed. O. Nkombe and Alphonse J. Smet (1978) identified an ideological trend, quite similar in characterization to Oruka’s “nationalist-ideological current,” that includes several very rich lines of articulate socio-political thought devoted to reconstructing the political and cultural situations of African peoples that were consequences of European imperialism, enslavement, and colonization: African personality; Pan-Africanism; Négritude; African humanism; African socialism; scientific socialism; Consciencism; and African “authenticity.” A second trend, the traditionalist, includes efforts that are quite similar to Oruka’s sage philosophy in that the efforts are focused on identifying philosophizing practices by traditional Africa thinkers, exploring the philosophical aspects of manifestations of these practices, and examining just how these practices resulted in the development of repositories of wisdom and esoteric knowledge. Nkombe and Smet identified a third trend: the intellectual orientations and practices of critical thinkers characterized by these thinkers’ critiques of the projects of persons grouped in the ideological and traditionalist trends structuring their critiques by norms and strategies drawn from familiar Left-critical (Marxist), Liberal Democratic, and creative appropriations of other traditions of European thought. Thinkers in the critical group applied the label “ethno-philosophy” to a number of the instances of thought in the traditionalist trend to set apart the latter modes of thought, as previously noted, as more akin to ethnology than proper philosophizing. Finally, Nkombe and Smet labeled a fourth grouping the synthetic trend, one characterized by the use of philosophical hermeneutics to explore issues and to examine new problems emerging in African contexts.