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Obstacles to progress

Challenges

studies and anecdotal evidence that stress the limited penetration of national policies across

the continent (Dowden 2008). Moreover our result on the strong effect of ethnic rules is in line
with an influential conjecture among African historians that deeply rooted ethnic societal and

institutional features still govern economic activity in many parts of Africa (Herbst 2001). “
"Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? 178
The Effect of National and Ethnic Institutions on African under-Development."
Papaioannou, Elias, and Stelios Michalopoulos.
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At the same time ethnic loyalties are frequently associated with conflict in Africa. Ethnic
ɡ
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violence can be triggered in ways the m'zuŋ u might find hard to conceive.
“ Combining results at the country and ethnicity level, our analysis indicates that a more

unequal distribution of rainfall increases the risk of ethnic violence whenever it penalises
ethnic groups with no access to power. With the data that we used, we were not able to isolate
the exact mechanism, but our findings suggest that rising grievances in the excluded group

would play a significant role “
.
"About Ethnic Conflicts, Inequality, and Rainfall in Africa." 179
Guariso, Andrea, and Thorsten Rogall.
*****

Francis Deng 180 provides one of the most accessible overviews as to how ethnicity came
to be associated with conflict in modern day Africa and highlights the necessity for a

rethinking the concept of a 'unified state'.His overview is worth reading in its entirety. The

following are some extracts :

“ The modern African state is the product of Europe, not Africa.
***
Traditionally, African societies and even states functioned through an elaborate system based
on the family, the lineage, the clan, the tribe, and ultimately a confederation of groups with

ethnic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics in common. These were the units of social,
economic, and political organizations and inter-communal relations.

In the process of colonial state-formation, groups were divided or brought together with little or
no regard to their common characteristics or distinctive attributes. They were placed in new
administrative frameworks, governed by new values, new institutions, and new operational

principles and techniques. The autonomous local outlook of the old order was replaced by the
control mechanisms of the state, in which the ultimate authority was an outsider, a foreigner.

This mechanism functioned through the centralization of power, which ultimately rested on
police and military force, the tools of authoritarian rule. This crude force was, however,