Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Why the Nation State is Wrong for Africa: thoughts and reflections

          In Africa there are a wide variety of traditions. In each of these traditions there also exist different beliefs. There has always been conflict over types of religions or belief, and this is especially true for Africa. So diverse, the continent supports more than five whole language families and three different major religions; Christianity, Muslim, and Native. 
          It is mostly because of these factors that separating Africa into nation states would be the wrong coarse of action. Ethnic tensions within Africa have caused many conflicts surrounding politics. The enforced vision of the nation state in Africa has grouped together not only many different religions, racial minorities, and languages, but has also required that they have to work together towards a nationalistic identity. This focus on nationalism diminishes the power held by preexisting cultures present in each nation state. These different groups also have distinct beliefs, which creates a lack of real linkage between them into a nation. In this way, Africa should not be separated into nation states bigger than each respective tribes' territories. 
          This would be the case unless the boundaries separating the nation states were changed. If their boarders were surrounding different racial groups and language families, separating them, then there would be a greater sense of unity. In this reading, it is brought up that the government of each nation state could also only act as an administrative center for organization and legislation, letting their people act separately from each other. This would create a unified country based on governance, not nationalism. 

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