Contemporary Issues in African Society

Historical Analysis and Perspective

George Klay Kieh, Jr., George Klay Kieh, Jr., George Klay Kieh Jr.

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319497716
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319497723
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the twin critical processes of state-building and nation-building in Africa and the confluence of major domestic and global issues that shape them. The book covers topics such as the expansive role of non-governmental organizations, the growing influence of charismatic Pentecostalism, ethnic conflicts in East Africa, the failure of the African Union's peacekeeping efforts in Sudan's Darfur region, and Africa's expanding relations with the European Union. It combines discussion of these frontier issues shaping contemporary African society with analysis from leading policy experts.

© The Author(s) 2018

George Klay Kieh, Jr. (ed.)Contemporary Issues in African SocietyAfrican Histories and Modernitieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49772-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Framing the African Condition

George Klay KiehJr.¹

(1)

University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia

End Abstract

Introduction

The vagaries of colonialism —the suppression of political rights , mass abject poverty and social malaise, among others—provided the major causes that galvanized Africans from across the broad ethnic, class , gender , ideological, regional and religious divide into organizing various anti-colonial movements. In other words, the pedigree of colonialism was uniformly unacceptable to Africans to the extent that they were prepared to set aside their various differences, and join forces in struggling against it. Amid the anti-colonial struggles, Africans entertained the hope that the end of colonialism would usher in a new dispensation in which their cultural , economic , political , religious and social rights, among others, would be respected and promoted by the emergent post-colonial state . Hence, when the wave of independence began to sweep across the African Continent in the 1950s, the collective hope of Africans for a democratic and prosperous future reached fever pitch. Ramsay (1993: 3) captured the tenor of the exuberance at independence:

The times were electric. In country after country, the flags of Britain , Belgium, and France were replaced by the banners of the new states, whose leaders offered idealistic promises to remake the continent and the world. Hopes were high, and the most ambitious goals [seemed] obtainable. Even non-Africans spoke of the resource-rich continent as being on the verge of a development take-off. Some of the old, racist myths about Africa were [at] last being questioned.

Regrettably, while Africans were singing the requiem for the demise of colonialism and demonstrating exuberance over the prospects of a new beginning for the continent, the reality began to set in that the post-colonial era would not be fundamentally different from its progenitor. The overarching evidence was that the first generation of African leaders—with few exceptions (Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Modibo Keita (Mali), and Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (Mauritius)—failed to provide the requisite leadership for the dismantling, rethinking and democratic reconstitution of the “Berlinist state” which had been bequeathed to the continent by the colonialists (Kieh 2007, 2014). Clearly, the state is important because it sets the parameters within which all societal activities occur. Hence, a state that is of the wrong type cannot shepherd the process of constructing a human-centered democratic and developed society. In other words, the “Berlinist state ” was intrinsically anti-people, anti-democracy and anti-development . Hence, it was incapable of serving as the foundation on which human-centered development could be promoted, and holistic democracy (one that transcends the political realm, and includes the cultural , economic , environmental , religious , and social as well) could be championed.

Consequently, over the past six decades, the African peoples’ hopes for a democratic and prosperous continent has been betrayed by the subsequent generations of African leaders, with few exceptions (Longman 1998). Rather than focus on the needs of the African peoples, every regime in every African state , with few exceptions, has made the primitive accumulation of wealth through the instrumentality of the state its preoccupation. Accordingly, the state in Africa has become akin to a buffet service in which the members of the faction or fraction of the ruling class that has control over state power at a particular historical juncture and their relations “eat all the can eat” (Kieh 2009: 10). One of the major resulting effects was the serious deterioration of the material conditions of ordinary Africans in the 1980s—the pervasiveness of mass abject poverty, high unemployment, food insecurity, etc. This led to the characterization of the decade of the 1980s as “Africa ’s lost decade” (Meredith 2010).

Against this background, this chapter has several purposes. First, it will examine some of the major dimensions of the African condition, especially the challenges that need to be addressed in order for human-centered democracy and development to take place on the continent. Second, the chapter lays out the purposes of the book. Third, the theoretical framework that provides the analytical compass for the book is articulated. Fourth, the chapter provides a summary of the key points of the various constituent chapters of the book.

Dimensions of the African Condition

Background

As has been discussed, Africa has faced multiple cultural , economic , environmental , gender , political , regional, religious , security and social problems over the past six decades of the post-colonial or post-independence era. However, it is not possible to discuss all of these problems in either a single chapter or a volume. Accordingly, only some of the dimensions—ethnicity , religion , democratization , civil conflicts , conflict resolution , non-governmental organizations, and international cooperation with the European Union (EU) and the rest of the “Global South ”—which are reflections of the topics that are covered in the various chapters, will be examined.

The Dimensions

Ethnicity is the most demonized social identity in the study of African societies. This is reflected in two major ways. Some scholars and practitioners portray ethnicity in Africa in a manner that suggests that it is inherently bad (Reynolds 1985; Angstrom 2000). The other way is that ethnicity is blamed by some scholars and practitioners as well as the principal culprit for virtually every dimension of the multifaceted crises of underdevelopment that has bedeviled the African Continent since the post-colonial era (Lian and Oneal 1997; Adesina et al. 1999). For example, the ethno-communal paradigm, the dominant perspective on the root causes of civil conflicts and the resulting wars in the continent, identifies ethnicity as the major causal factor (Horowitz 2000; Sriskandarajah 2005; Denny and Walter 2014). This has led Mkandawire (2012: 107–108) to observe, “In some essentialist (and often poorly veiled racist) accounts, it is suggested there is something fundamentally wrong with African cultures—and that senseless violence is an undisavowable excresc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Framing the African Condition
• 2. Non-Governmental Organizations and the African State
• 3. Civil Society in Africa: Interrogating the Role of Pentecostal Christianity in Africa’s Democratization and Development Processes
• 4. The Military, Militarism and State Integrity in Africa
• 5. Ethnic Conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa
• 6. The African Union and the Conflict in Sudan’s Darfur Region
• 7. Conflict Resolution in Africa
• 8. Africa and the European Union
• 9. Toward Addressing the African Condition: The Lessons
• Backmatter