The purpose of African orality is to educate while entertaining, with short stories, riddles and songs accompanied by traditional dances and fairy tales, all of which are cognitive activities. They are the bearers of a moral code that is very useful for the education of youths in society. In their fight for Cultural Renaissance, some post-colonial African writers are involved in a more realistic oral literature that meets the needs of Africans. Ayi Kwei Armah is one of these visionary artists who have developed a new structure of orality through various approaches in the Myth, Legend and Epic literary genres. This innovation has provoked polemics from critics. This paper examines Armah’s perception of gender equity while showing the historically awkward aspect of gender inequality in African literature. He also outlines the challenges and constraints associated with African writers’ deconstruction of the traditional African novel. The gender issue is explored in his historical novels as best fitting his vision of equity in cultural remodelling. Its effectiveness will depend on inclusive strategy of socio- political and economic empowerment. We have adopted gender theories and a Marxist approach to outline the problem and balance the roles of men and women to be more effective. In the end, the author’s work on gender shows the particularity of his texts that highlight a new form of literature, which has considerably contributed to the development of orality in terms of new strategies and cultural improvement.

Male virility in colonial and postcolonial African literature was the object of social disintegration. The conditions and representation of historical male heroes shows a difference in narration, style and characterisation between African myths, legends and epics. The Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah and the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe have not failed to address the issue of orality in their novels. This article assesses the extent to which the concept of male virility lost its prestige drastically during the British colonial hegemony. It also examines how these changes persist in an African society confronted with cultural irregularity in the texts of the two authors, which focus on the circumstances that have led the man to such an uncomfortable position as to lose his dignity in his society. He argues that revising certain African socio-cultural beliefs would be a significant asset for a more realistic vision of orality and help them be more effective in the decolonisation procedure and cultural reconstitution. As well as, it would prevent the victimisation of man by man in his society. The paper argues that the British colonial regime imposed its rule in Ghana and Nigeria through economic exploitation and the destruction of pre-existing cultures and that some defective cultures and traditional norms jeopardised the condition of man in his social milieu, which is out of step with Armah’s idealistic representation of pre-colonial Africa.