Academic literature on the topic 'Nation-building – Africa, Sub-Saharan'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the determinants of state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using hitherto unexplored variables in the literature. Design/methodology/approach The previously missing dimension of nation building is integrated and the hypothesis of state fragility being a function of rent seeking and/or lobbying by de facto power holders is tested. Findings The resulting interesting finding is that political interference, rent seeking and lobbying increase the probability of state fragility by mitigating the effectiveness of governance capacity. This relationship (after controlling for a range of economic, institutional and demographic factors) is consistent with a plethora of models and specifications. The validity of the hypothesis is confirmed in a scenario of extreme state fragility. Moreover, the interaction between political interferences and revolutions mitigates the probability of state fragility while the interaction between natural resources and political interferences breeds the probability of extreme state fragility. Practical implications There are two main policy implications. First, political interference, rent seeking and lobbying are likely to increase the fragility of SSA nations. Second, there is a “Sub-Saharan African specificity” in “nation building” and prevention of conflicts. Blanket fragility-oriented policies will be misplaced unless they are contingent on the degree of fragility, since “fragile” and “extreme fragile” countries respond differently to economic, institutional and demographic characteristics of state fragility. Originality/value The study is timely given the political strife, violence and conflicts issues currently affecting African development.

Africa is a continent of considerable cultural diversity. This diversity does not necessarily run in parallel to the national boundaries that were created in Africa in the colonial period. However, decades of nation building in Africa must have made their mark. Is it possible nowadays to distinguish national cultures in Africa, or are the traditional ethnolinguistic distinctions more important? This article uses an approach developed in cross-cultural psychology to examine these questions. In 2012, Minkov and Hofstede published an article in this journal analyzing World Values Survey data from seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa at the level of subnational administrative regions. They argued that national culture is also a meaningful concept in this region. This study reexamines the matter. It uses an innovative approach, looking at ethnolinguistic groups instead of at administrative regions and using the much more extensive Afrobarometer survey data set. It finds that although the Minkov/Hofstede study still has merit, the picture is more nuanced in several important ways. There is not one pattern that adequately describes the situation in the whole of Africa.1

The success or failure of nation-building in the new states has far-reaching implications for domestic, regional and international stability and security. This is aptly illustrated in South Asia today, where differences of language, culture and religion forge great obstacles to the creation of single nation states in both India and Sri Lanka. However, of all the regions of the developing world, it is sub-Saharan Africa that perhaps presents the greatest challenge to the idea of a nation-state. Colonial boundaries cut through ethnic groups and led to the creation of post-colonial states that were in no sense nations. These states contained several nations (or tribes) or part of nations within them. Unity that had been forged to rid colonies of foreign rule collapsed when independence was won and tribal loyalties resurfaced. Some states, such as Tanzania, have fared better than others since then in their efforts to create domestic unity, harmony and a nation-state. Others, such as Uganda, have sunk into anarchy. This paper looks at the example of Uganda in some detail. Particular attention is paid to the decade of the 1970's when Idi Amin was in power, and Uganda hit the international headlines on account of his reign of terror. Trends and events, both before and after Amin, are examined in an effort to establish whether the 1970's were an aberration or part of a continuing tradition of represssion in the name of state security. The Tanzanian action of intervening in Uganda, whatever the motive, had the effect of ridding Uganda of Amin. This action is analyzed in terms of its legitimacy and its consequences. The idea that nation-building is something which has to be generated from within, and cannot be imposed from without, is raised.

Infrastructural development is fundamental in nationʼs economic growth and development. Power infrastructure is imperative for nation building and helps create employment and improved the well-being of its citizens. This research paper identifies the impact of power infrastructure development on the economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study adopted a quantitative research approach with data gathered from the respondents within power infrastructure development in the region. Information gathered were analysed using mean item score, standard deviation and factor analysis. The findings revealed the impact of power development on the economic benefit in SSA to be wealth creation, boost in citizensʼ income, health care improvement, improved educational systems were seen as the direct impact of infrastructure development on the economic situation in sub-Sahara Africa. Since the lack of infrastructural facilities of an economy can lead to various setbacks in the nationʼs economic development, it thereby requires adequate participations by stakeholders to deliver sustainable power infrastructure development in the society. The study power infrastructure development can contribute to regional and national growth, urbanization challenges, and improvement in the environmental through the provision of clean energy which foster social and economic inclusion.

The Zimbabwean Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a pastoral letter on 14 August 2020. Its title, “The March is not Ended”, echoed the words of the late American civil right activist and politician John Robert Lewis. In the introduction, the bishops reminded their fellow citizens that “Peace building and nation-building are never completed tasks. Every generation has to establish national cohesion and peace”. In using the biblical text from Micah 7:1–6 where the prophet denounced corruption and oppression in his own days, the bishops took a swipe at Zimbabwean political leaders. African politicians never take responsibility for their misrule of the continent, which has kept Africa largely underdeveloped. The perplexity of the situation in Zimbabwe is reflective of similar situations in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa where leaders look the other way and shift blames. This research undertakes to explore how the Catholic Church in Africa has fared in its prophetic mission in relation to the political-cum-socioeconomic questions on the continent. It will acknowledge instances where the Church, through certain prelates, has proven itself to be a moral conscience. It will also indicate how the efforts of African bishops closely align with those of Pope Francis in relation to the prophetic mission of the Church as a defender of truth, human rights and social justice. Contribution: Africans, like most people in the world, have a very simple vision of the good life: to live in reasonable material comfort and in peace. This research is essentially anchored within Catholic social teaching. It underscores how the Catholic Church in Africa has defended and continues to uphold the rights of the people to actualize their aspiration of a simple good life in a hostile and self-serving African political and socioeconomic context. It notes that the Church cannot take the place of political leaders because its role is basically the promotion of the common good, which includes public order and peace, development, equality, justice and solidarity.

Nigeria continued to dominate both national and international political discourse as a model of democracy for the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa immediately after the successful conduct of the 2015 general elections that saw for the first time peaceful conduct of elections and transition from one civilian administration to the other and which brought the opposition party to power without violence or bloodshed. However, following the conclusion and outcome of the 2019 general elections, the perception of Nigeria has changed from being a beacon of hope for democratic Africa to being an amazement to Political scholars and commentators who find it difficult to unravel how she failed to consolidate the gains of the 2015 general elections and to emerge stronger as a democratic nation. This study leverages the governance approach, and explores the need to rebrand the electoral process for enhanced democratic governance in Nigeria. It examines the need for a healthy synergy between the electorate, the political class, political parties and the institutions of government for inclusive nation building. It adopts both the qualitative and quantitative methods of research in its exploration between 1999 and 2019. It takes a critical look at what has become characterized as Nigeria’s ‘brand of politics’- which is essentially corrupt, violent, and manipulative of the wishes of the people. The work argues that except the electoral process is rebranded in line with acceptable international best practices of democratic culture where the will of the people is seen to prevail, political apathy may persist.

Abstract Despite the fact that simple interventions and emerging therapies can increase survival of SCD patients, under detection renders SCD a major cause of under age-5 mortality in rural regions of the developing world where it is prevalent. (Piel et PLoS Med DOI: org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001484, 2013). Two major diagnostic challenges are: 1. A lack of affordable diagnostic methodology to obtain point-of-care results in low-resource environments. 2. Dispersion of SCD patients in vast rural hinterlands who rarely interface with healthcare services. To address the first impediment, we have developed and validated a simple, low-cost test to screen for SCD using aqueous multiphase systems (AMPS). AMPS are solutions of polymers and surfactants that form immiscible self-assembling step-gradients. An AMPS designed to target the density signature of sickle cell anemia forms the basis of this novel diagnostic technique. (Kumar et al, PNAS DOI:10.1073/pnas.14147391110, 2014). Building on a design previously tested in Zambia (Kumar et al, PLoS One DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114540, 2014) an improved test has been developed and named "Mpana" for "Multi-Phase Analyzer." The Mpana test detects the presence or absence of cells with a high mass-density as an indirect method to test for the presence of sickled cells. The test uses 5 µL of fingerstick blood, can be performed in 15 minutes using an inexpensive ($150), battery-powered centrifuge, the results can be read with the naked eyes by a trained reader (Figure 1) and costs 50 cents per test. The improved density-based test was first verified on fingerstick samples in the U.S. before being validated in a field study in rural Zambia. To manage the access difficulty of large-scale rural SCD screening, we exploited a partnership with the National Zambian Dental Training School. We have previously demonstrated that provision of free toothbrushes, toothpaste and other minimal health services is a powerful magnet to attract subjects in rural regions of Zambia that have high rates of tooth decay. Once collected these individuals can receive other healthcare interventions such as SCD screening. We conducted a cross-sectional field test of this approach in August and September of 2017 in the rural Serenje and Chitambo Districts of Northern Zambia. A local drama group and radio and mobile broadcasts informed the target communities about the dental intervention that attracted over 700 subjects. Of these, 503 children aged 1 month to 18 years were symptom screened for SCD, tested with MPANA, and dried blood spot (DBS) samples collected. The DBS were analyzed by iso-electric focusing and high-performance liquid chromatography at the New England Newborn Screening Program. Of the screened subjects, 78 had sickle cell trait and 17 had SCD. A score was assigned to visual readings of the MPANA test to enable ROC analysis.The ROC curve shows good diagnostic performance with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.84. (Figure 2) The MPANA test had a sensitivity of 71% (CI 47-88%) and a specificity of 99% (CI 98-100%), with an overall diagnostic accuracy of 98% (CI 97-99%). Importantly, the MPANA test had a negative predictive value of 99% (CI 98-100%). Combining Mpana results with a clinical symptom score yielded a slightly improved specificity of 100% (CI 99.5-100%) and yielded an overall diagnostic accuracy of 99% (CI 98-100%). In conclusion, a multidisciplinary consortium has achieved the first validation of a low-cost simple point of care test to diagnose SCD in a rural area of a developing nation and has demonstrated the ability of dental services to facilitate such screening. Offsetting the theoretical concern that the MPANA test might not detect SCD in neonates and young infants due to their high hemoglobin F content are the advantages that our SCD screening strategy is low cost, primarily utilizes local resources and immediately delivers positive subjects to care interventions (which could be anything in addition to or other than SCD screening). It is therefore amenable to scaling up for widespread application. Acknowledgments: The Provincial and District Offices, Rural Health Centers and communities that granted permissions and participated in this study. Author Contributions: Contributed equally to the work - CMCL,AAK,TPS Conflict-of-interest disclosure: Competing financial interests declared. Correspondence: Catherine Chunda-Liyoka, e-mail: catherinechunda@yahoo.co.uk Disclosures Kumar: Harvard University: Patents & Royalties: I am an inventor on patents for the underlying technology and the patent has been assigned to Harvard.. Humpton:Nano Terra, Inc.: Employment. Whitesides:Harvard University: Patents & Royalties: Harvard holds patents for this work. Stossel:Harvard University: Patents & Royalties: Co-inventor on MPANA patent. No royalties.

Defence date: 26 September 2019
Examining Board: Professor Stefano Bartolini, European University Institute (EUI Supervisor); Professor Raffaella A. Del Sarto, Johns Hopkins University; Professor Nic Cheeseman, University of Birmingham; Professor Bernhard Zangl, Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU)
This dissertation analyzes and compares successful and unsuccessful trajectories of state formation in six states in Sub-Saharan Africa. My research has been primarily motivated by two observations: (i) the formation of states has generally been equated with Western statehood, and it has rarely been studied in a systematically theoretical way beyond this context; (ii) particularly in International Relations (IR), the discourse on states in the Global South has often been framed in terms of failure, thus making externally-led state-building an imperative. It is striking that this debate disregards the historical records of state formation (Chapter 1). For this reason, I have decided to shift the perspective by bringing a classical state formation perspective back in to analyze state-making in the Global South. To understand what makes state formation successful, I draw on, and re-engineer, theories of European state formation. I have isolated four mechanisms that are particularly significant for the emergence of statehood: warfare; social coalitions; the character of collective identities; and the mode to satisfy the revenue imperative — taxation or rents. Carefully weighing the explanatory power of the different mechanisms against each other, I define them as pathway mechanisms and intervening mechanisms and use them complementarily to identify pathways to successful state formation (Chapter 2). Based on this theoretical framework, I conduct several theory-guided pairwise case studies. Two of these paired comparisons consist of one relatively successful state formation and one failed state formation trajectory, and the last pair juxtaposes two cases which are inbetween success and failure but with sufficient variance regarding their degree of statehood to make a comparison worthwhile. All pairs have started from similar initial conditions. In total, I examine six attempts at state formation in three pairs: Somaliland/South-Central Somalia as of 1991; Namibia/Zimbabwe as of their respective dates of independence (1990/1980); and Ethiopia/Eritrea as of 1991 (Chapters 3-5). Having analyzed all cases, I transcend the pairwise perspective in the final chapter and revisit all six attempts at state formation. In particular, I compare the trajectories of those cases with a similar degree of success or failure to draw general conclusions on the pathways of successful and failing domestically-led state formation. Lastly, I address some questions raised by my current research in order to indicate avenues for further investigation.
Chapter 1 and 6 of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The possibility of state formation and the limitations of liberal international state-building' (2018) in the journal 'Journal of international relations and development'

The Republic of Ghana is the legacy of the colonial amalgam of multiple, and previously distinct, ethnic homelands. The Trans-Volta Togoland became the Volta Region of Ghana following a Plebiscite in 1956. The dominant ethnic group in this region; the Ewe, has long maintained a claim of neglect of the Volta Region and the marginalization of its people in this postcolonial state. Protests in the street and at media houses ensued against the State. This qualitative case study explores the undercurrents of this conflict in the context of the Ewe group’s identity and their experiences of neglect and marginalization in the postcolonial state. The main objective of the study was to understand why the Ewe group has not revolted despite the perceptions of deprivation. This study focused on the Ewe group in the Volta Region of Ghana a as sub-colonial construct that has managed its perceptions of deprivation without revolting against the host State.

Identity has become the watchword of our times. In sub-Saharan Africa, this certainly appears to be true and for particular reasons. Africa is urbanising rapidly, cross-border migration streams are swelling and globalising influences sweep across the continent. Africa is also facing up to the challenge of nurturing emergent democracies in which citizens often feel torn between older traditional and newer national loyalties. Accordingly, collective identities are deeply coloured by recent urban as well as international experience and are squarely located within identity politics where reconciliation is required between state nation-building strategies and sub-national affiliations. They are also fundamentally shaped by the growing inequality and the poverty found on this continent. These themes are explored by an international set of scholars in two South African and two Francophone cities. The relative importance to urban residents of race, class and ethnicity but also of work, space and language are compared in these cities. This volume also includes a chapter investigating the emergence of a continental African identity. A recent report of the Office of the South African President claims that a strong national identity is emerging among its citizens, and that race and ethnicity are waning whilst a class identity is in the ascendance. The evidence and analyses within this volume serve to gauge the extent to which such claims ring true, in what everyone knows is a much more complex and shifting terrain of shared meanings than can ever be captured by such generalisations.

Africa is a continent of over a billion people, yet questions of underdevelopment, malgovernance, and a form of political life based upon patronage are characteristic of many African states. ‘Introduction to Africa and its politics’ explains that the core questions underpinning this VSI centre on how politics is typically practised on the continent; the nature of the state in Africa; and what accounts for Africa’s underdevelopment. This VSI aims to appraise sub-Saharan Africa’s recent political history, examining post-colonial political structures, the impact of colonialism, and the form and nature of post-colonial states. The type of politics practised in many African states continues to be hostile to genuine nation building and broad-based, sustainable development.