Nationhood and Statehood: The Impact of a Conflated Discourse on African Polities and Their Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups
Abstract
It is now conventional to refer to post-colonial African polities as ‘nations’ or ‘nation-states’. However, in this article I argue that the conflation of nationhood and statehood has led to the violation of the rights of non-dominant ethnic groups to meaningful political participation, equitable economic opportunities, ethnic identity, and secession. Thus this conflation leads to an on-going lack of legitimacy in postcolonial African states, thereby exposing them to perpetual neocolonial domination.
Key words: nation, state, nation-state, ethnicity, neocolonialism
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