The Illusion of the Post-Colonial State: Governance and Security Challenges in Africa

by W. Alade Fawole

Overview

This broadly interdisciplinary book offers deep insight into Africa’s colonial history for an understanding and explication of contemporary governance crises, security challenges, and state failure on the continent. It traverses political science, political economy, sociology, African history, and African studies in general.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498564625
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	08/14/2020
Series:	African Governance, Development, and Leadership
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.09(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

W. Alade Fawole is professor in the Department of International Relations, Obafemi Awolowo University.

Table of Contents

Preface: Is Africa Post-Colonial, Neo-colonial, or Post-Colonized? Part I: Colonial Rule, Disengagement and the Post-Colonial State Introduction and Conceptual Discourse Chapter 1: Colonial Rule and the Political Architecture of the Post-Colonial State Chapter 2: The Grant of Independence: Imperialist Conspiracy and the Subversion of the Post-Colonial State Chapter 3: Britain and the Orchestration of Pseudo-Decolonization Chapter 4: The Role of France in the Subversion of the Post-Colonial State Chapter 5: Portugal: Forced Decolonization and its Consequences Chapter 6: The United States and the Political and Economic Destabilization of Africa Part II: Regional Examples of Illusive Post-Colonial States Chapter 7: Nigeria: The Illusive Post-Colony Chapter 8: Mali: From Instability to Insurgency and Near Obliteration Chapter 9: Somalia: From State Collapse to Rogue State Chapter 10: Algeria: Descent into Dictatorship Chapter 11: Democratic Republic of Congo: The Colony that Never Became a State Chapter 12: Mozambique: From Revolutionary Possibilities to Contrived Instability and State Failure Chapter 13: Contemporary Nation-Building, Governance, and Security Challenges in Africa Conclusion: The Illusive Post-Colonial State: What Hope for Survival?

Editorial Reviews

The Illusion of the Post-Colonial State is an excellent, engaging, and illuminating book. With significant examples from different regions of Africa, Fawole challenges the dominant approach to the analyses of Africa as a post-colonial formation. He reinterprets Africa’s history in refreshing ways while encouraging a reconsideration of the bases of the continent’s core complications.

Wale Adebanwi

Is Africa post-colonial, neo-colonial, or post-colonized? This important intervention takes on board the dominant orthodoxy in the ways we think about the historical foundations of the political and economic travails of contemporary Africa and its future. It builds upon a critical tradition of writing about Africa in this regard to unearth what it calls the Big Lie of post-colonial statehood in Africa and its implications for an understanding of the trajectory of governance, security and development on the continent. In 13 core chapters, the book raises key conceptual and theoretical issues, grounded in rich empirical illustrations from all the five sub-regions of the continent, about the way we perceive study, analyze, understand, explain and address the past, present and future of the continent in a manner that illuminates what it considers the real character of the state in Africa. This is a refreshing and mature voice, tempered by the author’s more than three decades of teaching and research on Africa in Africa. It is compulsory reading for all those interested in the continent, and particularly for those not afraid to consider challenges to orthodoxies long held, or to engage other options for thinking about and encountering the state in Africa’s governance, security and development—past, present, and future.

Adigun Agbaje

In The Illusion of the Post-Colonial State, William Fawole artfully and intelligently rewrites the political science rulebook on the African postcolonial state. Taking a distinctive multi-disciplinary and multi-country approach, Fawole takes the reader on an illuminating tour of the discursive milestones in the evolution of a much-contested institution. The result is a bracing and historically grounded analysis that will appeal equally to students of Africa’s international relations, postcolonial history, state-society relations, foreign policy, and democratization.

Ebenezer Obadare