This book proposes new avenues for understanding tribal allegiance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much research on ethnicity and cultural pluralism in Sub-Saharan Africa falsely equates the term "tribe" with "ethnicity" and obscures the differences between Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions. It also puts too much emphasis on the role of the colonial state in fostering tribal allegiance. This book challenges these claims and offers an alternate way of understanding tribal allegiance in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This text examines questions relating to the term, ethnic groups: have ethnic groups always existed in sub-Saharan Africa?; why are 16 million Igbo in Biafra (Nigeria) and some 60 million Hausa in Northern Nigeria called tribes and ethnic groups, rather than nations in terms of peoples or socio-cultural groups, while the Austrian people, the Swedish people and the Danish people, under the same period and with populations that are less than 10 million are called nations?; what is an ethnic group?; how old are ethnic groups in Africa?; why are European immigrants in Africa never called ethnic groups, whereas Africans on their own continents are?
January 2001 Manufacturing businesses owned by an indigenous ethnic group, the Gurage, typically perform better than those of members of any other (major or minority) groups in Ethiopia. Gurage-owned businesses are normally larger and grow faster. Yet Gurage business owners typically are less educated than their counterparts in other groups and have less formal vocational training. Researchers have recently been asking why Asian and European minorities in Africa seem to be more successful in business than are people of indigenous ethnicity. Mengistae draws attention to the significant disparity in business ownership and performance that seems to exist among African ethnic groups as well. After analyzing a random selection of small to medium-size manufacturers in Ethiopia, he finds that establishments owned by an indigenous minority ethnic group, the Gurage, typically perform better than those owned by other (major or minority) groups. Other things being equal, Gurage-owned businesses are normally larger, partly because they are bigger as start-ups and partly because they grow faster. And yet Gurage business owners are the least educated ethnic group in the sample. Because the size and growth rate of a business also increases with the entre-preneur's education, the performance of other businesses would have been even worse if their owners hadn't been better educated than the Gurage. Indeed, dropping education variables from the size determination equation drastically reduces the estimated advantage of Gurage-run businesses. This suggests that the observed effect of ethnicity could be indicative of intergroup differences in unmeasured ability. More important, it means that whether or not the effect will persist in the long run will depend on the trend in interethnic differences in investment in education. This paper--a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to investigate the microeconomic foundation of the association between ethnic diversity and the poor growth performance that seems to characterize Sub-Saharan Africa. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "The Economics of Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship in Africa." The author may be contacted at [email protected].
Despite a quarter century of "nation building," most African states are still driven by ethnic particularism—commonly known as "tribalism." The stubborn persistence of tribal ideologies despite the profound changes associated with modernization has puzzled scholars and African leaders alike. The bloody hostilities between the tribally-oriented Zulu Inkhata movement and supporters of the African National Congress are but the most recent example of tribalism's tenacity. The studies in this volume offer a new historical model for the growth and endurance of such ideologies in southern Africa.
Ethnicity and the Colonial State compares the choices of community leaders in three different West African groups (Wolof, Temne, and Ewe), with regard to “selling” their identifications to the colonial rulers. The book thereby addresses ethnicity as a factor in global history.
It is an old racist adage that Africans have just come down from the trees. So why are young Europeans and Americans climbing back up them? Primitivism has always had a place in flaming the West's conception of Africa, whether in the form of the Noble Savage' or crazed cults such as the Mau Mau. If not everyone is quite ready to live in a tree house, the primitivism viewpoint has still made major inroads into modern society. NGO volunteers are central to the way the world relates to Africa these days. Why are these educated and motivated young people from the West predisposed to defining Africans ethnically? Privileging the Primitive argues that the popularity of modern primitivism in the West is highly relevant to the current recasting of African ethnicity. Some scholars argue that ethnicity is a relapse into primordialism, while others hold it be a more modern, fluid entity. The notion that ethnicity can be a moral code is growing. Historians argue over whether ethnicity is purely a product of African culture, a political category invented by colonial administrators, or a hybrid that mixes the two. Aidan Campbell locates ethnicity's derivation in our changing perceptions of Western society and, in particular, in the rehabilitation of the West's jaded political institutions.
Westerners have long represented Africans as “backwards,” “primitive,” and “unintelligent,” distortions which have opened the door for American philanthropies to push their own education agendas in Africa. We Come as Members of the Superior Race discusses the origin and history of these dangerous stereotypes and western “infantilization” of African societies, exploring how their legacy continues to inform contemporary educational and development discourses. By viewing African societies as subordinated in a global geopolitical order, these problematic stereotypes continue to influence education policy and research in Sub-Sahara Africa today.
