Abstract
This chapter reviews the nature and evolution of the postcolonial African state. Continuing from its colonial progenitor, the postcolonial African state has been an instrument of exploitation and predation. During the colonial era, European officials designed all of the institutions of the colonial government to facilitate the extraction and transfer of Africa’s resources for the benefit of Europe. At independence, these institutions remained in place, and African leaders stepped in and inherited the perverse institutions that treated the citizens as subjects. Given this background, the postcolonial African state has not been an agent of development, but has merely facilitated exploitation, corruption and bad leadership by successive African leaders.
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Notes
- 1.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “Why is Africa Poor?,” Economic History of Developing Regions 25, no. 1 (2010): 21–50; and Crawford Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa, (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).
- 2.
Robert Calderisi , The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn’t Working (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
- 3.
Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty; and UN Millennium Project , Investing in Development.
- 4.
The Economist, “The Hopeful Continent: Africa Rising,” December 3, 2011. See also Kingsley Moghalu, Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy’s ‘Last Frontier’ can Prosper and Matter (London: Penguin Books, 2014).
- 5.
UN Millennium Project , Investing in Development.
- 6.
Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
- 7.
It is important to note that there were also large empires that existed in pre-colonial Africa, but such empires were the exception rather than the norm.
- 8.
Acemoglu and Robinson, “Why is Africa Poor?”; Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa.
- 9.
Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformation in Slavery: A History in Slavery in Africa (2nd Edition), (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- 10.
Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 42.
- 11.
Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).
- 14.
Jeremy White, Central Administration in Nigeria, 1914–1948 (Dublin: Irish University Press, 1981): 79.
- 15.
Audrey Richards, East African Chiefs: A Study of Political Developments in Some Uganda and Tanganyika Tribes (London: Faber and Faber, 1959).
- 16.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” The American Economic Review 91, no. 5 (2001): 1369–1401.
- 17.
It needs be noted that although the colonial government set up inclusive political and economic institutions in the settler colonies , the natives (e.g., the Aborigines in Australia, Canada and New Zealand; and the Africans in South Africa) were strategically excluded from taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by those inclusive institutions.
- 18.
Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the 19th Century (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- 19.
Richard Reid, A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2012).
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Paul Salkin, L’Afrique Centrale dans cent ans (Paris: Payot, 1926).
- 22.
Young, The African Colonial State.
- 23.
Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (200): 251–67.
- 24.
Quoted in Young, The African Colonial State, 183.
- 25.
Young, The African Colonial State, 184.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Reid, A History of Modern Africa.
- 28.
Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Interventions in Africa: from the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
- 29.
Reid, A History of Modern Africa.
- 30.
Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Interventions in Africa.
- 31.
Odd Arne Westad , The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
- 32.
Reid, A History of Modern Africa.
- 33.
Westad , The Global Cold War.
- 34.
Claude Welch, Jr., ed., Soldier and State in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Military Intervention and Political Change (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970).
- 35.
The New York Times, “Lost Decade Drains Africa’s Vitality,” June 19, 1994.
- 36.
Howard Stein and Olu Ajakaiye narrate how the military government took advantage of economic liberalization in Nigeria to secure bank licenses for top military officers, in addition to garnering other juicy national assets that were privatized in line with the SAP of that era. See Howard Stein, Olu Ajakaiye and Peter Lewis, eds. Deregulation and the Banking Crises in Nigeria: A Comparative Study (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).
- 37.
Nicolas van de Walle , “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 41, no. 2, (2003), 297–321.
- 38.
Ali A. Mazrui and Francis Wiafe-Amoako, African Institutions: Challenges to Political, Social, and Economic Foundations of Africa’s Development (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
- 39.
van de Walle , “Presidentialism and Clientelism”.
- 40.
Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa run presidential systems of government. Only a handful of countries – Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius and South Africa – run the parliamentary system, while Swaziland operates constitutional monarchy.
- 41.
van de Walle , “Presidentialism and Clientelism,” 310.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, 15.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Some of the gains in social programs and improvements in public health have been achieved through foreign aid and other forms of development assistance.
- 46.
Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
- 47.
Francis M. Deng, “Ethnicity: An African Predicament”. Brookings, Summer 1997.
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Moghalu, Kingsley. 2014. Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy’s ‘Last Frontier’ can Prosper and Matter. London: Penguin Books.
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White, Jeremy. 1981. Central Administration in Nigeria, 1914–1948. Dublin: Irish University Press.
Young, Crawford. 1994. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Kalu, K. (2018). The Postcolonial African State Revisited. In: Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78987-3_2
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