/lit/ - Literature

>They are obscure to me therefore they must all be pseud soothsayers or animists, or derivative

Well maybe, sure. You'd have to ask yourself what constitutes a philosopher. These people have been variously considered philosophers, either by historians of philosophy, fellow contemporary philosophers who have responded to them or by the institutions that awarded them doctorates and that they taught at. If you think being a philosopher requires a certain soundness of metaphysics or methodology or whatever, requires you to be a revolutionary thinker or famous, or that African and post-colonial themes aren’t philosophy then take the ones you disagree with off the list. Apply those standards to philosophers outside of Africa too, if you want to do a comparative exercise. Still, even if you removed them according to those sorts of criteria there would still be at least several with genuine contemporary philosophical merit there IMO so my answer to were there black African philosophers is still 'not many, but yes'. Again, you might disagree.

If we're being honest and fair there are probably a combination of reasons why they are not well known. Feel free to apply your own academic or political persuasions to those.