This chapter reflects on a few crucial terms such as locality and exteriority, arguing from the standpoint that the force of African literature lies in its call to interrogate the very idea of the global and local. Commenting briefly on the early works of two African writers, Chinua Achebe and Assia Djebar, it shows how African literature poses questions about the type of world-making that is underway, namely, who are the beneficiaries and losers in the making and remaking of conceptions of “worldliness”? The essay also speculates on conceptual and theoretical flashpoints that emerge from the encounter between notions of African literature and world literature taken as separate entities. In attempting to recharacterize the theoretical assumptions of “worldliness,” it highlights African writing’s inherent universality, its generalized orientation toward the philosophical, as well as the intersections of terms like locality and universality within African literary criticism.