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
