  There are significant challenges to the viability of the concept Africana philosophy as well as to an effort to map out an encyclopedic overview of the extended and still expanding range of endeavors covered by the term. Foremost are the challenges to ordering through a single concept the geographical, historical, socio-political, and cultural differences and complexities that have defined and continue to define the realities of life of the many persons and peoples identified as “African” and “of African descent” in many locales throughout the world. Yet, the viability of the concept is grounded on several centuries of continuous, linked, complicated histories during which Black peoples of Africa, and their descendants, have been regarded as and engaged with, and more or less have come to regard themselves, as “African” peoples, as persons and peoples “of African descent.” The long histories of this regarding, by others and by themselves, have thus conditioned substantively the history-makings, the socio-political lives, the culture-makings and culture-mediations, intellectual productions and philosophizings included, of persons and peoples African and of African descent.