Fragmenting Nationalism and Institutionalizing Conflict and Underdevelopment in Africa

Abstract

African nationalists had forged a unified ideology towards decolonization and development irrespective of culture, religion, and ethnicity. This helped them to gain independence and mobilized resources for collective development. Conversely, post-independent African leaders in their bid to capture, use, and retain power have destroyed the nationalist ideology and introduced fragmentalism. This paper using secondary data and analyzing the data within the arguments of the social-conflict analysis paradigm discovered that the post-colonial elite have developed religious, economic, cultural, and ethnic identities to fragment their citizens. This new strategy of divide and rule has paved the way for them to personalize governmental resources. This has affected Africa’s effective participation in the globalization process irrespective of its comparative advantage. The paper also discovered that African leaders have continued to fuel conflicts and underdevelopment to perpetually keep the fragmented people poor. Based on these realities and findings, the paper recommends that African societies should initiate strong Indigenous leadership ideologies and business sectors based on their comparative advantage. This will change the ownership of the means of production and the social relations of production from a personalized elite group to a community-based approach of inclusion that will help solve the conflicts and underdevelopment challenges that have bedeviled the African continent.