The lecture surveys prominent trends in African philosophy since 1994. It suggests that the history of recent African philosophy can be understood through a fundamental tension in this field: between optimism and idealism, showing in the development of normative concepts and a new philosophical vocabulary for Africa–a “conceptual mandelanization”, on the one hand, and a critical realism ensuing from the experience of African “simple, that is, flawed, humanity”, on the other. Having outlined key contemporary approaches in African philosophy, the lecture goes on to interrogate the margins and absences of the field and identifies in them potential future trajectories of African philosophical thought.