State failure in sub-Saharan Africa: the crisis of post-colonial order

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 742-744
Author(s):  
Nicholas Westcott
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
State Failure ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Colonial Order

scholarly journals The Tragedy of Forestland Sustainability in Postcolonial Africa: Land Development, Cocoa, and Politics in Côte d’Ivoire

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Symphorien Ongolo ◽  
Sylvestre Kouamé Kouassi ◽  
Sadia Chérif ◽  
Lukas Giessen
Keyword(s):  
Cote D'ivoire ◽  
Côte D’Ivoire ◽  
Land Development ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Cote D’Ivoire ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Côte D'ivoire ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
Sustainability Standards

Tropical countries are often blamed for not managing their natural resources sustainably. But what if overexploitation is inherent in political structures and policies—rooted in foreign colonial order—and is consistently detrimental in the contemporary use of forestlands? This article argues that post-colonial land development policies and related political interests seriously impede the sustainability of forest ecosystems in Côte d’Ivoire. Methodologically, the study builds on a historic contextualisation of forestland use policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, with Côte d’Ivoire serving as a case study. The results indicate that the increasing development of so-called rent crops clearly follows the historical dynamics of ‘land grabbing’ and a post-colonial agrarian model. This situation benefits agribusiness entrepreneurs and, more recently, sustainability standards. The study discusses the findings based on recent literature and empirical evidence. In conclusion, the post-colonial heritage and the manipulation of the related patterns by elites and policy-makers largely explains the present-day unsustainable forestland conversions in Côte d’Ivoire.

Conflicts in Biafra, Katanga and Cabinda as a result of the geopolitical legacy of colonialism

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 238-246
Author(s):  
Olga Dzhenchakova
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Economic Factor ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact

The article considers the impact of the colonial past of some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and its effect on their development during the post-colonial period. The negative consequences of the geopolitical legacy of colonialism are shown on the example of three countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Angola, expressed in the emergence of conflicts in these countries based on ethno-cultural, religious and socio-economic contradictions. At the same time, the focus is made on the economic factor and the consequences of the consumer policy of the former metropolises pursuing their mercantile interests were mixed.

scholarly journals Normative intersectionality in married women's property rights in southern Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony C Diala ◽  
Jane C Diala
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Southern Nigeria ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

ABSTRACT The fate of marriage gifts during a customary law divorce is significant for the interaction of legal orders in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the context of scholars' fixation with conflict of laws. In analysing this fatet, this article introduces normative intersectionality as a theoretical framework for a nuanced understanding of how laws and socio-economic forces interact in post-colonial settings. Normative intersectionality rejects a legal positivist view of rights, which neglects people's adaptation of indigenous norms to socioeconomic changes. In this sense, normative intersectionality is useful for addressing the traditional Igbo law of matrimonial property, which regards a married woman's property rights as subsumed in her husband's rights. Using the division of marriage gifts in Southern Nigeria as a case study, the article draws attention to how legal orders speak to, rather than against, each other, and in so doing, stresses the adaptive character of indigenous laws. It argues that normative intersectionality illumines the interplay of gender equality, property rights and legal pluralism. Accordingly, it urges judges to use the imitative nature of legal pluralism in post-colonial settings to remedy entrenched systems of injustice and inequality, which often hide under the banner of tradition. Keywords: Adaptive legal pluralism, marriage gifts, African customary law, matrimonial property rights.

scholarly journals Glimmering Utopias: 50 Years of African Film

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassis Kilian
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Film ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The 1960S

The history of African film began in the 1960s with the independence of the colonies. Despite all kinds of political and economic difficulties, numerous films have been made since then, featuring wide-ranging processes of consolidation, differentiation and transformation which were characteristic of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. However, these feature films should not merely be viewed as back references to specifically African problems. The glimmering fictions are imagination spaces. They preserve ideas about how the post-colonial circumstances should be approached. Seen from this perspective, the history of African film may be studied as a history of African utopias.

scholarly journals The Impact of African Philosophy on the Realisation of International Community and the Observance of International Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33
Author(s):  
Foluke Ifejola Ipinyomi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Free Market ◽  
International Community ◽  
Shared Values ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Impact

The legal nature of international law is uncertain, despite being the foundation of the international community. Its non-universality questions the cohesion and efficacy of the international community. The international community operates as an exclusive club, coalescing around certain shared values, like liberal democracy and free market economy. Sub-Saharan Africa is usually excluded from being an active part of the international community due to differing values; a shared understanding of community which conflicts with the shared values of the core of the international community. Furthermore, their post-colonial nature deters African states from choosing their own path or adopting the norms of the ‘international community.’ A paradigmatic shift in research into sub-Saharan Africa and the international community is necessary to ensure a truly effective international community and wider observance of international law.

Fictional States & Atomized Public Spheres: A Non-Western Approach to Fragility

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Reno
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
State Failure ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Protection Policy ◽  
Collapse State ◽  
Failure State ◽  
Sub Saharan

This essay explains why political order in some places gives way to especially persistent conflict and prolonged state institutional collapse. State failure is rooted in decades of personalist rule, as leaders have sought to fragment and disorganize institutions and social groups that they thought would be possible bases of opposition. This problem was considered particular to sub-Saharan Africa, but now parts of the Middle East and Central Asia exhibit this connection between a particular type of authoritarian rule and state failure. State failure in these countries produces multisided warfare that reflects the fragmentation upon which prewar regimes relied for their protection. Policy-makers are thus faced with the dilemma of propping up personalist regimes that present themselves as bulwarks against disorder at the same time that their domestic strategies of governance play a central role in creating the conditions of protracted multisided warfare in the event that they fail.

Sixty Coups in Thirty Years – Further Evidence Regarding African Military Coups d'État

1986 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pat McGowan ◽  
Thomas H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Past ◽  
New States ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Coups D'etat ◽  
White Minority

Decolonisation in sub-Saharan Africa began in January 1956 when the Sudan joined long-independent Ethiopia and Liberia as a new, post-colonial state. Although the process is not yet complete because of the disputed status of Namibia and South Africa's continued rule by a white minority, over the past 30 years as many as 43 new states have achieved independence from colonial rule, the most recent being Zimbabwe in April 1980.

scholarly journals The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa: from colonial origins to the post-colonial period

Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCE BEECKMANS ◽  
LIORA BIGON
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Planning History ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Sub Saharan

ABSTRACTThis article traces the planning history of two central marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa, in Dakar and Kinshasa, from their French and Belgian colonial origins until the post-colonial period. In the (post-)colonial city, the marketplace has always been at the centre of contemporary debates on urban identity and spatial production. Using a rich variety of sources, this article makes a contribution to a neglected area of scholarship, as comparative studies on planning histories in sub-Saharan African cities are still rare. It also touches upon some key issues such as the multiple and often intricate processes of urban agency between local and foreign actors, sanitation and segregation, the different (post-)colonial planning cultures and their limits and the role of indigenous/intermediary groups in spatial contestation and reappropriation.

Second-hand clothing encounters in Zambia: global discourses, Western commodities, and local histories

Africa ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Tranberg Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
The Third World

AbstractThe rapid expansion in commercial exports of second-hand clothing from the West to the Third World and the increase in second-hand clothing consumption in many African countries raise challenging questions about the effects of globalisation and the meanings of the West and the local that consumers attribute to objects at different points of their journey across global space. This article draws on extensive research into the sourcing of second-hand clothing in the West, and its wholesaling, retailing, distribution and consumption in Zambia. Discussing how people in Zambia are deahng with the West's unwanted clothing, the article argues that a cultural economy is at work in local appropriations of this particular commodity that is opening space for local agency in clothing consumption. Clothing has a powerful hold on people's imagination because the self and society articulate through the dressed body. To provide background for this argument, the article briefly sketches recent trends in the global second-hand clothing trade that place the countries of sub-Saharan Africa as the world's largest importing region. There follows a discussion of Zambians' preoccupation with clothing, both new and second-hand, historically and at the present time. It demonstrates that the meanings consumers in Zambia attribute to second-hand clothing are neither uniform nor static but shift across class and gender lines, and between urban and rural areas. Above all, they depend on the cultural politics of their time. In dealing with clothing, people in Zambia are making sense of post-colonial society and their own place within it and in the world at large.

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