Major Issues in Contemporary Africa

Unit 1

The Challenges of Contemporary Africa

Contemporary Africa describes correctly the period after the formation of the Organization of the
African Unity, 1963. In 1963, the 31 African states were fully independent. These states and
other states which achieved independence later faced political, economic, and social problems.
The following are the major political and socio-economic challenges that Africa faced after the
independence.

1.1. Political Instability

Irresponsible and undemocratic governance, one-party rule, corruption, and injustice

characterized the political condition of the large African states after the independence. These
glaring shortcomings brought about oppositions, coup d'état, and revolution depriving Africa's
chance of economic development and instability. The post-independence period was especially
marked by coups and counter-coups. The government in many Africa states collapsed one after
the other in quick successions. The examples of such a political crisis in Africa after
independence listed below.

 Between 1963-1969 five violent changes of government occurred in Dahomey.

 In December 1962, Habib Bourguiba, president of Tunisia barely escaped from an
attempted assassination.
 In 1963 president Fulbert Youlou of Congo Brazzaville was overthrown.
 In June 1965, a military coup in Algeria overthrew President Ben Bella.
 In January 1966, a coup in Nigeria consumed the lives of many political leaders.
 In February 1966, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was overthrown from power.
 In September 1969, the army took power in Libya removing King Idris.

Why these and other political shakeups took place in Africa after independence?

 The hasty withdrawal of the ex-colonial powers before the Africans get experience in self-
governance in some countries.
 The political systems and organs of the government left behind by the ex-colonial powers
were not suitable and workable in Africa. Hence the political system left behind the ex-
colonial powers was based on western democracy.
1.2. Irredentism and Border Conflicts

In the early years of African independence in the 1960s African leaders of the era fully
understood, as expressed in the 1964 OAU resolution, that border problems constituted a grave
and permanent factor of dissension in the continent. Even though African leaders were well
aware that these inherited borders were irrationally and haphazardly drawn, they chose to accept
them, realizing that any attempt to remedy them would generate more problems than it would
solve. However, it soon became evident that the multi-ethnic, linguistic, and religious
constitution of most independent African states made border crises unavoidable.

The irredentist policy pursued by states like Morocco, Mauritania, and Somalia was a direct
affront on inherited colonial frontiers. Irredentism is the claim by a given state of ownership of a
part of a neighboring state and the desire to annex the claimed territory. The basis for such a
policy is the assertion that the claimed territory under another polity historically belonged to the
state pursuing the irredentist policy, or that there is a close ethnic affinity between its inhabitants
and those of the claimed territory across the border. The earliest case of the irredentist territorial
claim occurred in Northwest Africa in the early 1960s where Morocco claimed Greater
Mauritania, a territory comprising southwest Algeria, the Spanish territory of Western Sahara,
and the French colony of Mauritania. As far back as the decolonization period, many Moroccan
nationalists had envisioned an independent Moroccan state conterminous to its pre-colonial
status in territorial terms. However, at independence in 1956, the frontiers bequeathed by France
fell short of the dream of the nationalists. After independence, Morocco pursued an irredentist
policy to re-establish its pre-colonial historical form. Its relentless policy of territorial claims
resulted in constant border disputes with Algeria and Mauritania.

Morocco‘s annexation of Western Sahara in 1976, following Spain’s departure, brought into
armed conflict with the Polisario Front, Western Sahara’s nationalist organization that aimed at
the complete independence of the territory. Constant confrontation also occurred between
Morocco and Algeria as a result of the latter’s military backing of the Polisario. Meanwhile,
Mauritania, which had achieved independence in 1960, also laid claim to Western Sahara,
bringing it into violent conflict with the Polisario.

Apart from the complicated border crisis in Northwest Africa, irredentism also manifested in the
Horn of Africa, that is, the northeast corner of the content comprising the states of Ethiopia,
Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. In the region, Somalia pursued an irredentist policy against its
neighbors. Colonial boundaries had separated the Somali people into different imperial empires,
namely British, French, and Italian. Immediately after independence in 1960, British Somaliland,
now bearing the Republic of Somalia, proclaimed a policy aimed at incorporating into the
Somali state ethnic Somalis in Djibouti (former French Somaliland), Kenya, and the Ogaden
province of Ethiopia. To realize its Pan-Somali goal, Somalia promoted a supported secessionist
insurgence in these countries. States like Morocco and Somalia that Pursued irredentist policy
were not merely in conflict with their neighbors, they were at odds with the rest of Africa.
Irredentism, as a policy, ran contrary to one of the most fundamental principles of the Pan-
African organization, the OAU-that of the inviolability of colonial frontiers. Only Somalia and
Morocco refused to sign the OAU Cairo Accord of July 1964, which enjoined member states to
respect the boundaries inherited from the colonial powers. Thus, these two states were often
isolated by OAU member states.

Morocco‘s irredentist policy, in particular, caused a long-lasting rift between it and the
organization. Border conflict has continued to plague Africa. Nigeria and Cameroon have had
decade’s long border clashes over a disputed region, the oil-rich peninsula. In 1981 the two
countries went to the brink of war over Bakassi and another area around Lake Chad at the other
end of the two countries' common border. More armed clashes broke out in the early 1990s. The
dispute only ended in June 2006, when both countries signed an agreement by which Nigeria
agreed to withdraw from the region. In 1998, a border war erupted between Ethiopia and Eritrea
and lasted till 2000.

Border-related conflicts have generally been devastating to African states. These conflicts have
often adversely affected cross-border populations causing population displacement, large-scale
migrations, and massive refugee problems. Apart from the enormous loss of lives and general
insecurity of life and property, the conflicts have also caused the destabilization of states and
truncated their economic growth.
1.3. Secessionist movement

Civil conflicts over secessionism are essentially by-products of the colonial legacy. That is,
colonialism reconfigured the geopolitical landscape of Africa by incorporating hitherto
independent states into new colonial constructs. In some cases, the politicization of ethnicity, as
reflected in the repression and marginalization of some ethnic groups by the regime in power,
involved the secessionist fervor. In section four major secession movements are dealt with in
detail. One of the longest, bloodiest and successful secessionist movements was the secession of
Eritrea from Ethiopia, which is already discussed in your Ethiopia history course last year.

Congolese Civil War

Congo, a former Belgian colony, erupted into violence soon after obtaining independence on
June 30, 1960. The origins of the crisis lie deep in the legacies of Congo’s colonial history. The
colonial power never resolved the fundamental dilemma of ethnic differences. Throughout the
colonial period, it also never produced an adequately educated class capable of manning political
power after independence. It was no surprise, then, that the new post-independence political elite
proved utterly incapable of managing the challenges of a newly independent state. The state of
anarchy generated from political, military, ethnic, and racial tension gripped the country within
the day of its independence. The prevailing turmoil was further compounded by international
meddling and superpower Cold War interests.

Wars of secession necessarily exacerbated the Congo Crisis and threatened to disintegrate the
state. Even before its independence, the Congo had been confronted with the separatist
movements, for instance, in the Baluba-dominated south-central region of Kasai. Shortly before
Congolese independence was declared, the Kasai province had proclaimed its autonomy.
However, the immediate crisis of secession faced by post-independence Congo was the secession
of Katanga. Katanga (later renamed Shaba) was the important, mineral-rich southeast province of
the Congo under the control of the principal players in the Congo Crisis, Moise Tshombe.
Backed by Belgian military and business interests, Katanga declared secession on July 11, 1960,
proclaiming it an independent state. Within six months, the newly established sovereign state
itself had to grapple with a secessionist attempt when the Baluba of its northern region declared
its independence. Katanga was unable to wholly control the Baluba throughout its existence as
an independent state. Tshombe‘s resistance to UN pressures to end secession, and the state’s use
of military power to bring this about, made the Katangan secession a devastating brutal civil war.
In the end, however, the state of Katanga proved to be short-lived. UN military operations in
December 1962 led to the capture of its capital, Elisabethville (later renamed Lubumbashi). The
secessionist regime collapsed on January 15, 1963, when Tshombe surrendered, and the region
was subsequently reintegrated back into the Congolese state.

Meanwhile, during the civil war, Congo also faced the Kasai secession when, on August 8, 1960,
its leader, Albert Kalonji declared the equally mineral rich region, the State of South Kasai. This
secessionist attempt also led the Congolese state into a bloody war with the secessionist state,
although shorter in duration than that with its southeastern neighbor, Katanga. Congo's military
forces crushed the Kasai rebellion in less than six months, ending its secessionist bid. By
December 1961, the former South Kasai state had come under the effective control of the
Congolese state. Congo’s multidimensional crisis, of which the secessionist attempt played a
large role, nearly led to the disintegration of the Congolese state. The Congo experience
demonstrated to African states that secession was not to be tolerated. It was not only a
destabilizing factor but a conduit for foreign intervention in internal African Affairs as well.
Indeed, when the OAU was established in 1963, one of its cardinal principles, respect for the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of states was a condemnation of secession.

Nigerian Civil War (Biafran War)

After Congo, secession became more than ever before an anathema. Consequently, when the
Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967 on the account of the secession of Biafra, OAU’s stand was
unequivocally clear: the secessionist attempt must not be allowed to succeed in Nigeria to
prevent its occurrence elsewhere in Africa. It should be remembered that colonial frontiers had
created in practically all African states potential Katanga and Biafrans.

Like the crisis in the Congo, the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 sometimes referred to as
Biafran War had some of its roots in colonial history. After Nigeria’s independence in 1960,
ethnic animosity which colonialism had failed to resolve came to the fore. There was the general
notion of political domination of the federation by Hausa-Fulani of the North. Consequently,
many groups perceived themselves oppressed. To the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria, the pogroms of
1967 in the north in which hundreds of their kinsmen had been slaughtered were seen as a
confirmation of the futility of their continued existence within the Nigerian federation. In
consequence, under the leadership of the Eastern Region's governor, Emeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu, the Igbo proclaimed the secession of the region from Nigeria on May 30, 1967. This
was the immediate cause of the Nigerian Civil War.

Initial peace talks to resolve the Nigerian crisis between the federal government and the
secessionist state, the Republic of Biafra, failed. On July 6, 1967, Nigeria declared a total war on
Biafra, thus commencing one of the most devastating civil wars in early post-independence
Africa. External intervention, though not on the scale of the Congo Crisis, also dogged the
destructive war in Nigeria. The OAU intervention initially discouraged by Nigeria provided a
platform for the two sides to negotiate a peaceful end to the fratricidal, warfare within the same
groups. OAU efforts in the final analysis were futile. Uncompromisingly opposed to secession,
the organization could not be an impartial mediator. The terms of reference under which it was
mandated to mediate the conflict did not allow it any other alternative than to preserve the
territorial integrity of Nigeria. In the final analysis, after 30 months of bitter fighting, on January
13, 1970, the Nigerian Civil War ended on the battlefield with Biafra's surrender. It should be
noted that Biafra was not the first thought of secession in Nigeria.

During the early 1960's political crises, many regional leaders threatened to pull their regions
out of the federation. The northern politicians, in particular, for a while promoted the secession
of the Northern Region. A more visible case of an attempt at secession was that of the Niger
Delta, wherein early 1966, Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro led a rebellion aimed at carving out an
independent state in the region. This was an abortive attempt that was brutally put down by the
federal government forces.

Some ethnic-based self-determination organizations in Nigeria have advocated greater autonomy

for their respective groups since the 1990s. A few have gone further to call for secession. This
was true of Oodua People‘s Congress (OPC), a militant, nationalist Yoruba organization that in
the late 1990s advocated an independent Yoruba state in Southwestern Nigeria, to be achieved, if
necessary, by the use of force. Among the Igbo, a Neo-Biafran agenda resurfaced when the
Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) was established in
1999.
Sudanese Civil War

First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972)

The first Sudanese civil war was a conflict between South Sudan and North Sudan from the
1955-1972. During the first civil war the South Sudanese demanded representation and more
regional autonomy. In Sudan, it had been British policy to isolate the South until as late as the
1940s. One consequence was that it lagged far behind in terms of every index of development.
At independence in 1956, the constitutional future of Sudan still needed to be fleshed out.
Although southern politicians were led to expect that a federal solution would be found, their
northern counterparts opposed such a concession on the basis that might merely encourage
separatism. The integration of Sudan along unitary lines, therefore, led to a heavy predominance
of northerners within the administration, not just in the country as a whole (where southerners
constituted a tiny minority of officials) but also in the South. The worst fears of southerners were
further confirmed when the first military regime of General Abboud in 1958 adopted an explicit
policy of Islamisation and Arabisation in the South, culminating in the expulsion of the Christian
missions in 1964. The imposition of Arabic as the medium of instruction in schools was regarded
with dismay by southern intellectuals, not least because it was a further step towards their
marginalization within the administration. The alienation of the southern sub-elite was
fundamental to the launching of guerrilla war and the tortuous trajectory which it eventually
took.

In 1962, the newly formed Sudan African National Union (SANU) set up its secretariat in
Kampala, where there was much sympathy for the plight of fellow Africans. The following year,
a guerrilla insurgency was launched by and an organization calling itself the Anyanya, which
was loosely connected to the political wing of SANU. The attacks inside Southern Sudan
provoked a predictable government backlash, leading to the flight of tens of thousands of
refugees into neighboring states. In May 1969, Sudan experienced its second coup ushering in a
lengthy period of military rule under Colonel (later General) Nimeiri. Nimeiri committed his
regime to national reconciliation and introduced a southern policy. Members of the Communist
Party were included in the government, and the first Minister of Southern Affairs was Joseph
Garang, himself a southerner. However, the rebels were reluctant to call off their insurgency at a
time when they were making some headway. With the help from Israel, in the early 1970s, the
South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) was a reasonably well-drilled fighting force. In
1971, Nimeiri collided with the Communist Party and when the latter attempted to stage a
putsch, a number of its leaders were executed-including Joseph Garang. A new Minister of
Southern Affairs sought permission to enter into fresh negotiation with the rebels, and in
February 1972, the two sides met in Addis Ababa. They ended by signing an agreement that
granted a measure of autonomy to the South. The negotiated end to the rebellion was a
considerable achievement. However, southern spokesmen had never been inflexible on the
question of relations with the North.

Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)

The second Sudanese civil was a conflict between the central Sudanese government and the
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its armed wing, the Sudan People’s
Liberation Army (SPLA). The war resulted in the independence of South Sudan six years after
the end of war. Despite the Addis Ababa agreement of the 1972 some guerrillas had remained
under arms and they were now joined by mass defections of southern soldiers in 1983. The new
political organization which emerged out of this process of realignment was the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its armed wing, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA),
both of which were led by John Garang. The Nimeiri regime responded to the renewed
insurgency by astutely exploiting American geopolitical concerns. The Nimeirei regime also
armed Arab and south minority militias.

By the mid-1990s, the SPLA controlled most of southern Sudan and many important towns. The
government also controlled Juba, the most important city in the South and other strategically
important southern towns along the Nile. Various international efforts to broker a halt to the
fighting achieved little success until the parties to the conflict, meeting in Nairobi, finally agreed
in 2004 to a peace accord, which included a power-sharing arrangement. Besides, the accord
held out the prospect of eventual secession by the south if its inhabitants chose to go their way.
In 2005 John Garang died in a helicopter accident. Garang’s death complicated but did not derail
the peace accord. Ironically, the apparent resolution of the civil war between north and south
took place at the same time a new civil war – in a region of western Sudan known as Darfur was
spiraling out of control. Despite the crisis in Darfur the Bashir government and the SPLA began
to implement the terms of the accord. Under the peace accord, inhabitants of the south have the
right to hold a referendum on independence within six years. Between 9 and 15 January 2011, a
referendum was held to determine whether South Sudan should declare independence from
Sudan. 98.83% of the population voted for independence.

Other Secessionist Movements

Apart from the historic unsuccessful secession attempts of Katanga and Biafra, and the
successful breakaway of Eritrea and South Sudan, separatist groups have not ceased to articulate
secessionist aspirations in the contemporary period. Since the 1970s, there have been threats of
secession in many countries.

 In Angola, for instance, a secessionist movement called Front for the Liberation of the
Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) began to advocate for the breakaway of Cabinda, an oil-rich
enclave in the northwestern part of the country. The full-fledged armed confrontation
embarked upon by this movement against the Angolan government only ended in 2006
when FLEC signed an uncertain cease-fire agreement with the government.
 In Senegal, a secessionist rebellion began in 1983 in the Casamance region in the south of
the country, located between the Gambia and Guinea Bissau. For over two decades,
guerillas of the separatist movement, the Movement of Democratic Forces in the
Casamance (MFDC), waged a very bloody war against Senegalese forces. In Africa,
ethnic groups, which had always felt marginalized and their existence threatened within
their state borders began to agitate for separate existence.
 Movements seeding self-determination for their groups have been active in many states.
Claiming marginalization, separatists of the Anglophone regions of Cameroon have
campaigned for secession since 1993. This has caused a series of clashes between the
state and the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), the organization
championing self-determination.
 In Comoros, the Island of Anjouan declared its independence from the Comoros Union in
1997. Its sovereignty lasted until 2002 when it reunited with Comoros. However, another
secession bid by the island in July 2007 was militarily crushed by Comoros the following
year.
  Namibia, in 1999, experienced a violent conflict when the Caprivi Strip, its narrow
northeast region sandwiched between Angola and Zambia to the north, and Botswana to
the south attempted to secede from the state. The attempt led to the Caprivi Conflict. The
conflict involved and an armed confrontation in Namibia between the Caprivi Liberation
Army (CLA), the secessionist group led by Mistake Muyongo, and the Namibian
government. The main eruption occurred on 2 August 1999 when the CLA launched an
attack in Katima Mulilo. Namibian quashed the attempt of secession within a few days.

All in all the above secessionist movements' serious sources for political instabilities for newly
emerged African states in the post-colonial period.

1.4. Regionalism, Elitism and Tribalism

The demise of colonial regimes in Africa gave rise to a territorially fragmented continent where
the sheer viability of many of the states was open to question. Several states faced the most
serious of all challenges of national unity. The political system and organs left behind by the ex-
colonial powers were unsuitable in Africa. Besides, the colonial policies of divide and rule had a
very retrogressive impact on African states after independence. This gave rise to the problem of
regionalism and secessionism. Lack of consensus between stakeholders as to how to run the
political machinery of the emerging nation-states' Facing Elitism and Tribalism is another
problem arose after independence, when new national leaders lost touch with the lives and
interest of the people. This opened the gap b/n leaders who enjoyed power and prestige and the
mass of the voters who were living in the same way as before.

The post-colonial rulers had always behaved as an elite chosen few (another part of colonial
legacy) that did not need to keep in touch with the lives and interests of the ordinary people.
Taking overpower by the means and methods left to them by colonial rulers, new national
leaders found it easy to behave as an “elite”. They clung to power & prestige. This problem of
elitist government by the small privileged group was not confined to Africa; it has brought
trouble to all nations elsewhere. But in Africa, it was linked to another part of the colonial legacy
which made the problem worse i.e. tribalism. And the two together Elitism & Tribalism could
be very destructive.
The experience in Somalia after independence (1960) was the best instance. The departing
Italians gave Somalia a parliamentary system modeled on Italy. This parliament was elected by
proportional representation i.e. each class in society could have a party with seats in parliament.
Ex landowners, businessmen, farmers, city workers…etc. each could have their party. This might
work in Italy where people are divided into classes, but it could not work in Somalia because
people are not divided based on class rather based on different clans or tribes. Nearly, all Somali
were farmers or cattle keeping people. As a result, Somali for most of its part remained
disunited.

Hence, having all the powers and prestige, the small elite at the top fought personal battles for
their interests. Whenever election comes they went back to their clans against their rivals. Once
back in power again they returned to their skirmish and squabbles over sharing the plunder of
office. This disunity & personal rivalry led directly to bad government & corruption. Somali
farmers and cattle folks began to hate their rulers saying that independence had brought them
nothing but dishonesty, lies, and broken promises. The gap between the ruled and the rulers was
now wide & filled with anger. After 1969, some change was observed the colonial system was
swept away. A group of patriotic officers under General Siad Barre took power. They began to
experiment with new ways of governing Somalia to promote Somalia's unity effort to tackle the
country's real need. There followed brief hopeful periods of grass-root democracy, unhappily this
experiment in promoting people's power was given no time to develop. In 1976 Somali went into
war against Ethiopia because the Somali of Ogaden or Eastern region of that empire was
enclosed by Ethiopian envision during the 1890s. They wanted to join Somali. This was
disastrous for Somalia because the experiment in people's power was abandoned & worse times
lay ahead.

In some cases criticisms arouse such as after the winning of independence, the nature of the
leadership of the new African leaders was determined by three factors. These were the heritage
of colonial rule, the way independence was won and the problems of the independence era.
Though the elite had denounced the colonial rulers, they had inherited many colonial social and
political values. That is, independence was not a revolution but a change of rulers. The European
officials simply left power to their former auxiliaries. The system they had built for themselves,
such as offices and symbols of power were taken over as they were by the new rulers.
1.5. Neo-colonialism

Neocolonialism is the practicing of using economics, globalization, cultural imperialism and

economic aids to influence a country instead of the previous colonial method of direct military
control (imperialism) and indirect political control (hegemony). Neocolonialism differs from
standard globalization and development aid in that it typically results in a relationship of
dependence, subservience or financial obligation towards neocolonialist state. In reality its
economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. The methods and form of
this direction can take various shapes. For example, in an extreme case the troops of the imperial
power may garrison the territory of the neocolonial state and control the government of it.

More often, however, neocolonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means.
The neocolonial state may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power
to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control over government policy in the
neocolonial state may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the state by the
provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control
over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial
power. As Kwame Nkrumah explains, the economic system and thus the political policy in neo-
colonies is directed from the outside. The attainment of independence inaugurated an uncertain
and increasingly crisis ridden period of transition in Africa.

Colonialism largely destroyed the fundamental rhythm of pre-capitalist social and economic life
without fully advancing a new. The commoditization of agriculture had been pivotal to the
processes of capitalism in colonial Africa. After 1960 continued growth along these lines faltered
while varying in extent from country to country and crop to crop. With the 1970s export-oriented
agriculture (and the entire agricultural economy) entered into sharp decline in most countries.
While circulation of goods and even productive activity had become dependent on industrial
processes, the independent African states lacked finance, infrastructure and skills in order to
reproduce an industrial society. Secondary industrial growth occurred quite rapidly, particularly
through the 1960s, but from a very low base and with a high reliance on imported capital goods,
spare parts, raw materials, know-how and technology. Intended to further the prospects of
national economic independence, industrialization necessarily deepened dependence on
international trade.

Direct intervention in political affairs through the operations of foreign troops and intelligence
agencies was common in the wake of the Congo crisis of the early 1960s. Western involvement
in Kwame Nkrumah’s overthrow was a response to his increasing alignment with the Soviet
Union in the mid-1960s. President Apollo Milton Obote of Uganda’s tough line on South Africa
and Rhodesia together with his reluctance to continue allowing Israeli military aid to the
southern Sudanese rebels via Uganda helped to bring about his downfall in 1971. In contrast, the
longtime president of oil-rich Gabon, Leon Mba, owed his survival from the wrath of his own
people to French paratroop intervention in timely fashion.

Between 1960 and 1985, almost half the Western Multinational Corporation investment in Africa
was in South Africa, supporting not only apartheid there but also contributing to neighboring
countries underdevelopment. MNC is a business organization whose activities are located in
more than two countries. MNCs and Pretoria government viewed South Africa as the regional
core for their expanding activities throughout the regional periphery, whose role was a labor
reserve, a market, and a source of raw material. MNCs with subsidiaries also in South Africa’s
neighboring countries controlled their banking systems invested much of these countries surplus
in South Africa, shipped raw materials for processing from them to South Africa, and neglected
their manufacturing and (sometimes) mining industries.

Until the 1980s, the international copper companies in Zambia, Zaire, Botswana, and Namibia
built most fabricating factories in South Africa or the West. South Africa tried to destabilize its
neighbors economically and militarily when they attempted to undermine the white-minority
government or (in 1982) to establish SADCC (Southern African Development Coordination
Conference), a regional economic cooperation arrangement. Destabilization included delaying or
taxing shipments of food and vital inputs, failing to renew migrant-worker contracts, and
supporting guerrillas against the neighbors.

French colonies have been more closely linked with France than have most British colonies with
Britain. The French signed wide-ranging accords de cooperation with each new francophone
state to ensure that France would provide most of the services it had provided before
independence. French colonies were linked to France by preferential tariffs, quotas, and
guaranteed export prices. Francophone countries, with few exception, tied their currencies to the
French franc, which restricted monetary independence and industrial import substitution, but
attracted foreign capital and avoided serious domestic currency overvaluation. But generally
these ties encouraged long-established specialization in primary product exports rather than
economic structural change.

Belgium, perhaps the most ruthless of European colonizers, did little to preparer Zairian political
leaders’ struggle for control of the state erupted into armed confrontation, secessions, and
assassinations with foreign governments providing political and military support to domestic
factions. The US, Britain, France, West Germany, and Belgium regarded Prime Minister Patrice
Lumumba and his followers as an opening for international communism and a threat to Western
investment and access to strategic raw materials. The West supported Mobutu Sese Seko‘s
overthrow of Lumumba’s government in 1960 and of President Joseph Kasavubu in 1965. Major
Zairian interests behind Mobutu were the bureaucratic members of the African colonial elite who
moved into top political administrative posts in 1960. Mobutu grew increasingly dependent on
American economic and military assistance for the survival of his regime, and welcomed US and
other Western investment. The US supported Mobutu and his associates, despite their repression,
enormous corruption, and wealth accumulation.

The US and its NATO allies (especially West Germany and France) generally provided
economic, diplomatic, and military support to Portuguese colonial rule against national struggle
by Movimento Popular de Libertaҫão de Angola (MPLA), organized in 1956, and the Frente de
Libertaҫão de Mozambique (FRELIMO), founded in 1962, until both achieved independence in
1975. In the 1970s, Nigeria took several steps that should have reduced its neo -colonial
dependence. It cut substantially the share of its trade with Britain; acquired majority equity
holdings in the local petroleum extracting, refining, and distribution; and promulgated and
indigenization decree shifting the majority of ownership in manufacturing from foreign to
indigenous hands. But these measures did not greatly reduce the neo-colonial nexus. In contrast
to more diversified exports in the 1960s, petroleum comprised more than 80% of export value for
the 1970s. Moreover, only 15-20% of the petroleum industry’s total expenditure on goods and
services was spent on locally produced items, which do not include most basic requirements like
drilling rings, heavy structures, underwater engineering systems, and other advanced
technologies. Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Malawi, and Cote d‘Ivoire made even less progress than
Nigeria in using indigenization requirements to reduce neo-colonial dependency.

Chapter Two
2. The Gains of Independence
2.1. Political gains

Political gains included the power to build national political systems capable of making national
decisions, and shaping national policies for the present and the future. The Africans achieved
power to reduce or remove foreign political controls, the power to experiment with different
policies, solutions, constitutions, and new ideas across the whole range of self-government. The
powers to work towards new forms of unity within and between African nations are also political
gains. In all these ways, the political gains of independence gave another power: they restored to
Africans the power to make their own mistakes in policy and government, and therefore, the
power to learn how not to make mistakes.

The process of decolonization was characterized by the introduction into the African colonies of
many of the democratic institutions’ of the European colonial powers. Elections were held, the
right to vote was extended to the mass, and political parties appeared on the scene to contest the
elections, and the powers of government increasingly resided in an elected parliament and prime
minister rather than with the colonial rulers.

The new mode, which was theoretically based on popular sovereignty and electoral support
rather than on coercion, posed both opportunities and risks to the new indigenous elite, in that a
newly enfranchised electorate represented a potential source of political support but also a
political resource that could be mobilized by rival elite groups. Across the continent, some
nationalist movements were able to move into the new institutional context and harness this new
source of political supremacy more successfully than others, and these differences had important
consequences for subsequent patterns of political change.

In almost all cases, however, the new order was not sufficiently congruent with the needs or
preferences of the emerging political elite, who after independence moved quite rapidly and
deliberately to dismantle these democratic institutions. There followed a period of political
jockeying and institutional experimentation as political elites sought to establish various types of
authoritarian regimes that would allow them to consolidate power and prolonged their rule.

2.2. Cultural gains

Cultural gains included the destruction of the colonial weapon of racism. They reinforced the
right of Africans, now recognized by the entire world, to stand equal with the rest of mankind
after long colonial subjection. African culture broke through the isolation of Africa's people;
through their ignorance of their continent and of the world; through all the barriers erected by the
colonial rule against Africa's self-expression and intellectual development.

In pre-colonial Africa led by kings, chiefs, or queen mothers, ethnic groups defined the ways
their members organized and expressed their thoughts, behaviors, and feeling. They also
provided religious teachings and practices of their members. Religion was the central cultural
component in all ethnic groups. Participation in the practices of traditional African religions
among fellow ethnics was a mainstay in all ethnic groups.

The years after independence were especially conducive to the revival of indigenous culture.
Post-WWII nationalist movements preached political independence and economic
modernization, but there was also the urge for a concurrent reaffirmation of Africa's values as
expressed in its arts, its literature, its philosophy, and its history.

Nkrumah, along with many other Africans felt the need to go beyond political or economic
freedom to achieve as well independence from the ethical aesthetic standards of the West to
affirm age-old indigenous traditions, customs, and values in the modern world. It was a natural
impulse, a desire to rid of ‗alien', colonial ways with their foreign educational, linguistic, artistic,
and philosophical measurement, a desire to introduce an authentic African idiom into the
mainstream of contemporary world civilization. The central idea here is the colonial system gave
the way for the slow assimilation of Africans into western culture. Decolonization of the
continent became an inescapable imperative for the post-independence Africans, who manifested
an explicit desire to assert the truth about themselves and their world through the projection of
their personality and cultural values to the world community.

However, achievement proved elusive; cultural independence would not come by legislative
statute. For one thing, there were African traditions that seemed dated in a modern world, while
foreign ideas and institutions – long resident in Africa – refused to disappear, remaining
occasionally to be misinterpreted or misused, sometimes in bizarre fashion.

2.3. Social gains

Social gains included the opportunity to build modern services in public health as well as public
education; to bring the benefits of modern science to the work of improving everyday conditions
of life; to train qualified men and women for all such services; to overcome ignorance or
superstition about the causes of bad health and social conflict. Not least, social gains gave the
power to reduce the many inequalities suffered by women.

The belief that education would bring economic and social benefits to newly independent
African countries stimulated governments and citizens to invest in schooling. Many people
viewed education as the means to a better life. People came to see education as a reward for
citizenship, one of the fruits of independence, and governments regarded it as necessary for
building modern productive economies and for forging national unity. Campaigns to Africanize
national civil services by replacing Europeans with the newly the educated Africans fulfilled
both economic goals and popular demands. Apart from its hoped-for economic and political
returns, education came to be internationally recognized as a basic human right. Governments
looked to mass education to help fight poverty.

In independent Africa, ministries of education became responsible for providing, managing,

inspecting, and supporting preprimary, primary, and secondary schools, universities, and
colleges including teachers training colleges as well as vocational, technical, and other training
institutions. Thus, education systems inherited from the colonial governments were diversified.
Many governments made education compulsory.
In the first years of independence, African educational systems expanded tremendously, Primary
enrollment rose from 11.8 million in 1960 to 20.9 million in 1970 (not including South Africa
and Namibia). Secondary enrollment increased from 793,000 in 1960 to 2.5 million in 1970. The
expansion was buoyed by citizen's demand for education and by governments and organization's
faith that education would bring economic development. Yet although this expansion opened
school doors to many groups who have not previously had access to formal education, it was not
egalitarian. Most national educational systems served only about 50 percent of the school-age
population, and, like colonial educational systems, they typically favored urban populations.

2.4. Economic gains

Economic gains included the power to build national plans for national development, to
command national resources, and to own and manage all kinds of business enterprise. They also
included the power to work with new kinds of economic policy, organization, and control; and
the opportunity to join, whenever desirable, with other African countries in joint plans or
enterprises. Above all, these economic gains gave independent countries the power to cut down,
at least to some extent, the transfer of Africa's wealth to countries overseas; and to use African
wealth, more and more, for Africa's benefit.
 Chapter Three
Questions about Development in Post-Colonial Africa

Development in human society is a many-sided process. At the level of the individual, it implies
increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility, and
material well-being. More often than not, the term 'development' is used in an exclusive
economic sense – the justification being that the type of economy is itself an index of other
social features. What then is economic development? A society develops economically as its
members increase jointly their capacity for dealing with the environment. This capacity for
dealing with the environment is dependent on the extent to which they understand the laws of
nature (science), on the extent to which they put that understanding into practice by devising
tools (technology), and on how work is organized.

The economic performance of African states varied greatly from one to another, but looking at
the overall picture, it becomes clear that during the second and third decades of independence,
the earlier modest growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) per head of population first
slowed to a halt and then began to decline.

At independence, the general cry was for rapid economic progress, and much debate ensued on
how to achieve it. One suggestion was that African countries should adopt the methods of free
enterprise or capitalism, in which economic development would be left in the hands of people
are, therefore, provided with more of the necessities of life, and if these improvements are widely
available, not to a privileged few but the people at large. Judged on these criteria, Africa is the
poorest continent in the world.

There was the promise of popular participation in the identification of needs and the
implementation of programs to address the needs of Africans. Generally, the prospects were
optimistic because Africans were allowed partially to control their destinies politically. This
translates into Africans building their industries, develop other infrastructure, attract foreign
investment and aid to be able to realize their social and economic potential. The boom in world
trade during the 1960s with its growing demand for the supply of raw materials which was
Africa's main line of export strengthened this optimism.

Unfortunately, this identified optimism and emphasis on industrial, social, and economic
development gradually evaporated. From the beginning of 1970 all the African industrial, social,
and economic development initiatives were grounded to a complete halt.

Throughout the continent, economies experienced deep, pervasive, and continual crises
characterized by stagnation, rising foreign and internal debts, increased unemployment,
shortages of consumer goods, and the deterioration of social infrastructures. African
Governments, in general, responded through the "honest advice" of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and World Bank by introducing price controls and subsidies for many popular
consumer items as well as inputs for production such as fertilizers and seeds. However, these
measures proved ineffective and as the situation in each African country deteriorated further the

International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank intervened, ushering in a new era of the

African industrial and economic order history which popularly came to be known as Structural

Adjustment Programs

As a result of the structural adjustment program, by 1990 many African countries had borrowed
so much from the IMF and the World Bank to an extent that they were unable to pay off their
debts leaving the IMF and the World Bank no alternative but to introduce the structural
adjustment program by force to be able to retrieve the money owed by African countries.
The economic crisis and development dilemma of the continent as a result of multifaceted
factory emanating from unfair trade balance since the time of slave trade to colonial exploitation
and post-colonial politics. In other words, Colonialism and contemporary neo-colonialism,
slavery, and the un-mastered modernization programs and projects that are constantly and
brutally forced on to Africa by the globalization process continue to keep the region on its knees.

3.1. Economic legacy of colonialism

1) A lack of infrastructure and the infrastructure created did little to encourage internal exchange
or development.

2) Little investment in the local population in terms of health and education leaving the newly
independent government with huge social expenditure requirements.

3) A wide antipathy for local commerce limiting business opportunities among the indigenous
population. In some cases, extensive laws were passed prohibiting the economic activities of the
local population. The entry of commercial groups of external origins was encouraged including
groups such as Lebanese and South Asians.

4) Little investment in agriculture relying on small scale producers using little or no new
technology and therefore doing little to alter the structure of pre-colonial agriculture. At the same
time, small-scale producers were increasingly incorporated into world agricultural markets which
subjected them to the vicissitudes of global prices.

5) Extensive state control of commerce including agricultural marketing boards due to the
pressure on colonial states to be financially self-sufficient.

6) Virtually no attempt to create manufacturing or industry. Instead, the emphasis was on

enclave forms of investment like mining which had few linkages to the surrounding economy.

There are some exceptions to this legacy. In particular countries like South Africa, South
Rhodesia and Kenya did have a different pattern owing to a large settler population, which put
pressure on colonial regimes to alter this somewhat.

As a result of all this, at independence, the post-colonial governments inherited economies with
low levels of education, poorly developed infrastructure, few African entrepreneurs, little
technical change in agriculture, undiversified economies with small manufacturing capability, a
reliance on a few crops or minerals for export earnings and state structures and policies which
were quite intrusive. African governments faced enormous pressures and challenges after
independence. The frustration and anger of local populations coalesced into independence
movements leading to a very rapid transfer of power. The same anger was rapidly transformed
into enormously high expectations and aspirations of the potential of post-independence
governments. The pressures partially explain some of the bad policy choices of new
governments. The rapid pace of independence, and little investment by colonial states in an
African civil service, created a large administrative and political vacuum that left the state open
to patron-client pressures. Poor policy choices were also due to the impact of prevailing
orthodoxy and the character of investment and aid.

3.2. Causes of Africa’s Development Dilemma

The revelation from the above discussion is that Africa's economic and industrial development
dilemma is not a lack of talents. Currently, Africa has a source of highly intelligent and carefully
trained professionals in a variety of skills, who, unfortunately, practice their profession outside
Africa leaving it to crumble. Once again Africa's development dilemma is not a lack of resources
either. Anyone with the most basic knowledge about the economic geography of Africa is aware
of the vast variety of resources both natural and human.

The arrested economic and industrial development of Africa can be attributed to the following
factors:

1. Corruption: African politicians are dubbed as corrupt by the Western World. And the question

that needs asking is ―who encouraged the African politicians to be corrupt?‖ Billions of Africa‘s
wealth have been stolen and deposited in European banks. The financial institutions where these
bounties are deposited are aware that individuals cannot amass such wealth taking into account
the combined income from their businesses and other sources. The fact that African colonies
have been granted political independence for over fifty years is not the issue.

The issue is the continuous backing of the Western World's financial institutions' acceptance of
the billions stolen from African countries by their leaders and deposited with them. Assuming
such deposits by African leaders have been rejected by the western financial institutions, African
leaders would have thought twice before stealing from their countries consider Mobutu Sese
Seko, Bokassa, Abachar and Taylor. The conclusion that can be drawn is that African leader's
corruption is another plot by the Western World to stagnate the industrial and economic
development of African states.

2. Political instability: From 1960 to 1990 African countries experienced destabilization from the

political front with the help of the Western World's intelligence agencies like the M16, the CIA,
the KGB, the Massad, and the various French and Italian intelligence agencies including the
Mafia. The result had been a string of coup de tats leaving a trail of destruction and the legacy of
potential instability. Another excuse for the Western World to invest in African countries and
complained that these countries were not stable. Who caused the destabilization? Countries that
suffered from the instability included Ghana, then Zaire, the Congo Republic, Uganda, Nigeria,
Angola, Mozambique, the Gambia, and recently Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, and
Burundi and Rwanda, Somalia, and Chad.

3. Advice of IMF and World Bank: African governments seem not to realize that the IMF and
the World Bank are not their allies to help them in the economic and industrial development of
their respective countries. Unfortunately, they rely on these institutions whose aim is to cause
total economic and industrial doom to the developing world.

4. Rape of multi-national corporations: The development agenda of these financial giants has
nothing to do with the industrial and economic welfare of African states. Their development
programs have been transplanted into Africa and do not benefit Africans. In everything they do,
it is their interests first no matter the consequences to the host countries.

5. Lack of effective regional integration: Even though Africa has regional economic groupings
like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), South African Development
Community (SADC), and the East African Development Community (EADC), they seem to be
concerned about their territorial extravagance and not real economic and industrial development.

Instead of integration, they stand in their isolated forms where development initiates are not
planned among these regional development blocks.
6. Lack of democratic practices: African governments lack the spirit of tolerance and criticism by
opposition thereby choking the process of democracy for economic and industrial development.
There is, therefore, a need for political maturity to be displayed in all African countries where the
opposition should be considered as the God-Father of the forgotten lot thereby putting the ruling
party on its toes to consider the people first.

7. Lavish spending of African leaders: Many African leaders are known for their extravagant
spending at the expense of the welfare of their citizens. Several of such leaders do not even see
the need to raise the social levels of their people. They buy expensive presidential planes that
take them around the world to further sell their countries to the Western World.

8. Currency disparity: The currencies of African countries have no value in the international
market arena.

Al in all, even though the period of colonial rule was a relatively brief one in Africa, the
European powers profoundly reordered African political space, modes of economic production,
and social hierarchies and cleavages. The modality of colonial rule varied from one colonial
power to the next, but the result was always domination, exploitation, and organized repression.
Despite this, World War II coincided with the emergence of African demands for political
independence. With the onset of the independence era, colonial regimes in Africa were replaced
by independent, African-led regimes that were more or fewer carbon copies of their colonizers'
political systems. At a fundamental level, the post-colonial African state looked like a top-heavy
administrative state. In addition to this, the post-independence period in Africa also coincided
with the beginning of the Cold war, in which the United States and the Soviet Union both sought
to acquire supportive clients in Africa by providing military and economic assistance in
exchange for international political support. These clients adopted different approaches to
development based on their perceptions of the benefits of close association with one superpower
or the other. Besides, the end of the Cold war resulted in different relationships between African
and non-African donor countries and abandonment of ideological rhetoric.

African regimes generally committed themselves to turn the process of globalization. They
realized that to become effective players on the global stage, they were going to have to establish
an active presence in organizations such as the world trade organization and the United Nations.
Progress has been made in this direction, but there remains an ongoing debate in Africa over the
merits of the globalization process.

3.3. Structural Adjustment Programs

Access to IMF and World Bank Funds were tied to certain sets of preconditions Known as
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). This conditionality's applied universally and was
modeled on the practices of developed capitalist systems rather than on the specific needs and
best interests of the individual African countries concerned. Firstly, governments were required
to balance their budgets: it meant a cut in the annual growth of government expenditures. In
practice, it means a growth in unemployment and poverty as thousands of public employees were
laid off drastic cuts were made in the provision of health.

The second, and often most dreaded precondition, from an African viewpoint, was a devaluation
of the currency. On the other hand, this ensured that producers of export crops and minerals got
better prices on the world market for their commodities. The other side of the same coin,
however, was a rise in the cost of imports. This included most consumer goods, fuel oil, and
even food to feed burgeoning (rapidly increasing) urban populations. Thus for most Africans
devaluation meant a dramatic increase in prices on consumer goods.

The Third Precondition for IMF and World Bank Financing was the Liberalization of Capital
Controls. Africa's greatest economic weakness, next to its adverse terms of trade, has been its
lack of adequate indigenous capital to invest in its industry, agriculture, and other forms of
production.

Declining world prices for African Commodities during the 1980s and the consequent drastic
shortage of foreign exchange had pushed most sub-Saharan African Countries into Structural
Adjustment programs by the early 1990s. International Financiers were more concerned that
SAPs should increase exports to pay off foreign debts rather than help the continent as a whole to
become regionally self-sufficient. This meant the continuation of the old colonial pattern:
Concentration on cash crops for export at the expense of food crops for local consumption. The
best agricultural land and expensive new irrigation schemes were thus set aside for export crops.
In the Sub-Sahara region, subsistence farmers were pushed to marginal lands previously pushed
for pasture while pastoralists were squeezed ever closer to the margins of the desert. Through the
international debt system, Africa in the early 2000s was still a net exporter of her wealth to
Europe and America. Every year Africa spends more of her precious foreign exchange in debt
repayment to foreign banks than she receives in foreign aid.

It is therefore understandable that in Lagos in April 1980 the secretary-general of the

Organization of African Unity, the Togolese Edem Kodjo, shouted: 'Africa is dying... there
seems to us no future in the future'. The main feature of contemporary Africa is more than ever
its dependence on the West. This dependence is, of course, due to poverty; but also to the recent
colonial past, which has brought about a very special relationship with the former mother
countries. This dependence is undoubtedly the West's doing; but it is also an internal, accepted,
interiorized feature because culturally- speaking the model is still European. Thu s in terms of
cumulative investment, France is only third (with16percentofthetotal), behind Great Britain
(39per cent) and the United States (21percent); but it is at present the leading net exporter of
capital to Africa, and overall (though the Federal Republic of Germany is hard on its heels)
remains Africa's prime trading partner and main supplier of technical assistance.

As soon as their countries became independent, African governments were genuinely desirous of
improving the standard of living of their people by increasing their income s and providing
essential social service s and infrastructural facilities. All were virtually convinced that the most
Rational way to bring about these changes was through economic planning.

Indeed, before African independence, the development literature had featured debates as to
whether or not to plan. However, in immediate post-independence Africa, these debates were
won hands-down by the planners as post-independence governments came out soon after the
demise of colonial rule with a plan document responding to the perceived development needs of
the country and its people. But these plans, which were more often than not prepared by
foreigner s with relatively little experience of the countries concerned, were 'lacking in real
control, political support or potential for implementation'. It is therefore not surprising that at
least during the first independence decade, the decisions as to the grand areas of development
strategy or ideology were not normally within the province of the planners. Indeed, if the truth
must be told, the economic crisis that has engulfed the continent since the second half of the
1970s has been largely the cumulative result of the continued operation of the African economies
within the framework of the inherited colonial economic legacy.

African leaders rushing from one end of the political and economic spectrum to the other with
such rapidity, it is difficult to keep track of development models and ideological postures. From
import substitution, growth-pole development, bottom-up development, basic needs, joint
ventures and indigenization, nationalization and partnerships, and most recently structural
adjustment, African leaders have gone through their entire series of socio-economic and political
prescriptions.

3.4. African Socialism

No single definition of African socialism emerged from the conference, but there was general
agreement that it was that form of social, political, and economic organization based on a
humanistic conception of man, which could provide the maximum economic progress and
reassert the traditional collectivist values of African life.

The concept of African socialism emerged in African thoughts in the 1950‟s at a time when
many of the African countries were getting ready for independence. Then the problem
confronted by the first crop of political elites or leaders in their various territories was how to
mobilize the values and the energies of their people, tradition and modern, for the development
of the territories after independence. It was within this atmosphere that African socialism
emerged. Some of these African leaders and proponents of African socialism are Julius Nyerere
of Tanzania, L. S. Senghor of Senegal, kwameh Nkurumah of Ghana, and Sekou Toure of
Guinea. The common principles of the various versions of African socialism were: economic
development guided by a large public sector, incorporating the African identity and what it
means to be African, and the avoidance of the development of social classes within society.
Senghor claimed that "Africa's social background of tribal community life not only makes
socialism natural to Africa but excludes the validity of the theory of class struggle," thus making
African socialism, in all of its variations, different from Marxism and European socialist theory.

African socialism calls the modern man back to the land and culture as the source of authentic
social progress and self-hood for there seem to be regretful awareness by the present-day
African, that being exposed to European education, culture, values, and the capitalist exploitative
tendency has eroded from the African his true self and has alienated him for his development,
hence the need to pursue progress from the roots of the African culture.

African socialists assert that the bond of brotherhood and unity, in the traditional society of
Africa was very strong; they, therefore, suggest that these brotherhoods and unity should be
encouraged in modern society.

If we take Julius Nyerere of Tanzania African socialism argument he says, Ujamaa', then, or
Family hood', describes our socialism. It is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy
society based on the exploitation of man by man; and it is equally opposed to doctrinaire
socialism which seeks to build its happy society on a philosophy of inevitable conflict between
man and man. We, in Africa, have no more need of being converted to socialism than we have of
being ‗taught democracy. Both are rooted in our past –in the traditional society which produced
us. Modern African socialism can draw from its traditional heritage the recognition of society as
an extension of the basic family within the limits of the tribe.

But African socialism appears to represent a wide spectrum of orientations toward African
politics. To be sure, the ideology lacks rigorous orthodoxy, which allows African leaders safely
to project almost any notion of what their African socialist utopia should be like.

Chapter Four
4. Socio-Cultural changes in Post-colonial Africa
The history of most African countries since 1940 seems to revolve around a single event: their
gaining of political independence. But this climax of nationalism must be set within those social
and cultural changes of which it was so much the product and which were, in the main,
confirmed in their course for at least a decade or two thereafter. The Second World War boosted
a whole variety of social changes: the intensification of cash crop production, the acceleration of
migration of all kinds and the rapid growth of cities, the diversification of the occupational
structure, and, eventually, the movement of Africans into its upper echelons, and the expansion
of modern education at all levels. All these implied changes in areas more immediately
constitutive of ' society ', namely in how people identified themselves and in their patterns of
social cooperation and conflict. Now the concept of ' social change ' is more than a mere
umbrella for several parallels, probably somehow-related changes in diverse aspects of social
life; it denotes the systematic transformation of a particular society.

6.1. Religion

In Africa, religion is not just a set of beliefs but a way of life, the basis of culture, identity, and
moral values. Religion is an essential part of a tradition that helps to promote both social stability
and creative innovation. It is therefore not surprising that in his agenda for social transformation
and in the search for a new ideology to guide that transformation, Nkrumah saw in religion a
resource to be utilized as well as a problem to be contained. He sees African society as rooted in
traditional religion and broadened by Christian and Islamic influences. As a resource, he sees the
new ideology as a question of the three religious traditions in Africa and yet if social harmony is
to say in secular terms without abandoning the basic values of African traditional religion or the
African historical experience of both Islam and Christianity.

The problem of religion in African social transformation arises from both the strength and the
plurality of religion. Traditional African religion was among other things a vehicle for exploring
the forces of nature and for systematizing new knowledge both of the human and physical
environment. In the search for understanding and coping with the many aspects of nature, the
African recognized several divinities and established many. It was tolerant of religious
innovation as a manifestation of new knowledge always hoping to interpret and internalize the
new knowledge within the traditional cosmology. Thus in time both Christianity and Islam
developed within Africa initially in a symbiotic relationship with traditional religion.

The degree of indigenization of Christianity and Islam in the past had depended on the autonomy
of the people both socially and politically with the loss of autonomy under colonialism
traditional African religion became identified in the mind of many Africans with an Africa that
had failed and had been subjugated many people began to proclaim adherence to Christianity or
Islam. The spiritual heritage of Africa is rich and complex but was obscured by various
colonialist agendas educators and politicians and it has its implication on post-colonial African
life. As a result one of the dominant issues in post-colonial African religious issues was how to
revive African ‘traditional’ religious belief by maintaining and indigenizing Christianity and
Islam too.

6.2. Postcolonial African Literature: an Overview

Postcolonialism in Africa refers in general to the era between 1960 and 1970, during which time
many African nations gained political independence from their colonial rulers. Many authors
writing during this time, and even during colonial times, saw themselves as both artists and
political activists, and their works reflected their concerns regarding the political and social
conditions of their countries. As nation after the nation gained independence from their colonial
rulers, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, a sense of euphoria swept through Africa as each
country celebrated its independence from years of political and cultural domination. Much of
early postcolonial writing reflects this sense of freedom and hope.

In the years that followed, as many African nations struggled to reinvigorate long-subservient
societies and culture, writers of postcolonial Africa began reflecting the horrors their countries
suffered following decolonization, and their writing is often imbued with a sense of despair and
anger, at both the state of their nations and the leaders who replaced former colonial oppressors.
Critics have proposed that this sense of disillusionment, reflected in the works of such authors as
Ayi Kwei Armah, marked the beginning of a major change in African intellectual and literary
development. Beginning in the 1970s, the direction of African fiction began to change, with
writers forging new forms of expression reflecting more clearly their thoughts about culture and
politics in their works.

Postcolonial studies gained popularity in England during the 1960s with the establishment of
different institutions and African studies centers in Europe and America, this phenomenon did
not reach its zenith until the 1990s. Because postcolonial writers are studied by and read most
often by Western audiences, their works are often seen as being representative of the Third
World and studied as much for the anthropological information they provide as they are as works
of fiction. This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that many indigenous African
authors in the postcolonial era and beyond remain un-translated, and are thus unavailable to
western critics. In the meantime, the canons of translated or European-language works that are
available, although but a minor part of African literature in general, have come to define
postcolonial literature and its critical response.

African writers are themselves very conscious of this gap between texts that are accessible to the
West and those that remain in Africa. The language issue became a central concern with many
African writers in the years following decolonization, and some, have chosen in the years
following independence to reject English and other European languages in favor of native
African writing. These were opposed by several African writers who see the advantage of
writing in the European language. In contrast, opposes of European language writing theorized
that by writing in English or French and other European languages, African authors are
continuing to enrich those cultures at the expense of their own.

Writers who support African-language literature are also concerned that European languages are
unable to express the complexity of African experience and culture in those languages, along
with the fact that they exclude a majority of Africans, who are unable to read in these languages,
from access to their literary success. In contrast, critics have pointed out that while African-
language literature is popular with indigenous African populations, such writing tends to be
formulaic and stereotypical. While the language debate continues, many authors have expanded
their literary horizons by collaborating with everyday African people to produce writing that is
popular in both origin and destination.