Managing Diversity and Difference in Africa: A Citizenship Approach

Abstract

In most of their post colonial period, African and other Third World states are coping with ethnic diversity. Process of nation building and formation of national identity has presented immense challenges to these newly formed states. Liberal notion of state neutrality in dealing with its diversity in practice is a myth. These multiethnic states use the western notion of citizenship which is basically based on individualist notion of society. However African society has a character of communitarian conception of society. Their struggle to create a single national identity based on individualism ultimately become responsible for the exclusion of minority communities form the national polity. Hence paper will argues that in order to manage multi-ethnicity and multi-nationality within the notion of nation-states, an enhanced notion of inclusive citizenship is apparent for democratic polity.