Au-delà des relations internationales classiques, le processus de mondialisation mobilise quantité d'acteurs économiques, sociaux et culturels, individuels et collectifs, qui agissent dans l'espace mondial. Nous étudions ensemble, Africains, Latino-américains et Européens, comment il en dérive de nouvelles relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales, comme celles promues en Afrique et en Amérique latine. Bertrand Badie, Marie-Françoise Durand, Delphine Allès, Atta El Battahani, Carlos Milani, Gaïdz Minassian, Papa Samba Ndiaye, Karen Smith, Folashadé Soule-Kohndou.
L'État-nation en Afrique - Atta El Battahani
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En provenance du cours de Sciences Po
Afrique et mondialisation, regards croisés
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État-nation
Avec Bertrand Badie, Atta El Battahani et Papa Samba Ndiaye. | L’État-nation est-il encore fonctionnel partout dans le monde ?
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Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
My topic today is Nation State in Africa.
A nation as we know is a large body
of people united by a set of bonds
or commonalities such as
common descent, culture, history
and living in a particular territory.
A Nation can exist without a state,
but a state cannot exist
without a nation or a community.
A state is a precise political identity of a nation.
We can have nations without states
like the case for example
they are a nation but do not have a state.
A state is a type of polity
and according
to the famous Weberian definition,
a state is a set of institution
assuming exclusive legal control
over the means of violence,
ie having the right to legitimate violence
and a state is the only agency
charged with law and order
among other functions of course.
With regard to Africa, there is a debate
on this issue of the nation and state.
When it comes to the debate
on nation state in Africa,
there are number of issues
and points one can point to.
The first has to do
with the sequencing of nation and states.
Does a nation come first and then the state
or the state first and then the nation?
Another important issue now raised
is the impact of globalization
on this process of sequencing.
Would globalisation enhance nation formation,
or would it also consolidate
state building institutions
and what’s the outcome for that for Africans?
Nation formation and state building
is a double faced process
for the African countries.
And we have to take them together
and the task of managing this complicated
cross cutting process falls
on the shoulders of the African elites
who took over power immediately
after independence following the Second World War.
Their task however was not made easier.
Number of factors have created problems
and attempted to undermine this process.
I may mention four or three of them.
One had to do with the colonial legacy
of the political boundaries drawn
by Berlin conference in 1885.
If you have a look of the African map
you see that most of these boundaries
were drawn by straight lines
not minding the realities
on the ground in terms of the ethnical,
cultural boundaries.
In most cases, political boundaries
do not coincide
with social cultural and ethnic boundaries.
In some cases we have ethnic groups
thorn between two political entities
creating later on problems.
And here again one may point also
to by comparative knowledge
that political boundaries in Africa
were not sensitive to social cultural realities
as in Europe or as in Asia for example.
Another factor that made it difficult for
African elites in post-independence era
to manage this process was
what one may call the overdeveloped state
or the “imported state” to use Badie’s terms.
In this regard, the state
has enormous power
and resources over society,
over the community at large.
People from different ethnic origins,
cultural origins within the newly territorially
created states were asked
to pay allegiance to this state.
But this state in most cases
did not treat them equally.
Another factor that has also contributed
to this was what one may term
as cost effective administrative systems
used by European rulers.
They relied on native administration
what they called divide and rule,
in order to cut the cost
of administrative system over there.
And this at a later stage has led
to revival and continuity of
primordial loyalties
which had somehow did not make it easier
also for creating a unity
among these various groups.
Another added factor one may refer to,
is that Europeans did not go through
a wholesale industrialisation
in the African colonies.
Nonetheless, there were
few economic projects
and there were also provision
of social educational services
but in certain regions not covering
all the parts of the countries or the colonies.
Indigenization of state institutions
after independence led to tensions
and conflicts over monopoly
by the privileged groups.
Those groups who happened to live
in regions that benefited
from colonial economic projects
and colonial social and educational services.
Naturally the educated elites
led the nationalist movements
and took over the state apparatus.
To give you from one from the Sudan,
out of 800 of the posts,
the so called “sudanization”,
were taken over by northerners
leaving between 6 to 8 to the southerners.
For the southerners,
this is something like to northernization
and not sudanization of the state institutions.
And this has opened the door
for how are we to characterise
this national identity or this sudanization?
How are we to bring this various groups together
within this newly created political entity
There are number of strategies
that have been proposed
by political elites in Africa.
But generally the two major strategies:
one called for what is called
“unity and conformity”
meaning that groups, cultural, religious, ethnic,
they should as somehow assimilate
to a core culture of the dominant group.
For example, in Ethiopia, the Amhara,
in Sudan the Arab-Muslim
and in other cases in the Kenya,
the Kikuyu as such.
So qualifying as a Sudanese
and as an Ethiopian or a Kenyan
means that one has somehow
to come closer to adopting this similar like
the so called WASP
in the United States of America.
But this has met by resistance.
It is like a kind of eternal vision unity.
The other opposing strategy
is that of “unity in diversity”
whereby ethnic, religious,
dignitar groups had the right
to preserve their own identity
but within an overall identity
and national identity.
For example in Nigeria, the Kikuyu,
the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani can retain
their own identity but within a Nigerian identity all,
each contributing to enrich
this overall national
national identity or national integration.
The impact of globalisation
of this mutual process,
cross cutting process of nation formation
and state building is paradoxical or contradictory.
One the one hand, globalization
strengthens centralized tendencies,
autocracies, by bringing subjecting people
to the will of the state,
centralized bureaucratic state.
But on the other hand also,
it revives primordial loyalties
by supplying them with access to information,
to communication across borders.
And some might see this
as a process frustrating the nation formation
and telling sovereignty while others
may see this also as the right to self-determination
for this marginalized groups,
who did not find themselves
in the newly created African states.
It depends on how one looks at it,
from globalisation strengthening centralization
or globalization reviving old loyalties.
And I think coming back to the debate
whether globalization enhances
state formation or whether it undermines
nation state formation in Africa,
I think the answer is still in the making
and it remains to be seen
in the near future how this would come out.
Thank you
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