GeoJournal 43: 91–97.

 1997 (September) Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

‘Nation-states’, ‘quasi-states’, and ‘collapsed-

states’ in contemporary Africa
Christopher, A. J., University of Port Elizabeth, Department of
Geography, P.O. Box 1600, Port Elizabeth 6000, South Africa

Received 17 December 1996; accepted 7 May 1997

Abstract: The revival of ethnic identities and the search for historical roots have been
significant factors in re-shaping the map of the world in the late twentieth century. Multi-
ethnic states have come under increasing strain throughout the century and undermining the
concept of the ‘nation-state’. However, the successor states to the colonial empires in Africa
exhibit the same strains as the often highly fragile successors to the European continental
empires earlier in the century. The survival of these ‘quasi-states’ has been dependent upon
the support of the international community for over thirty years as a reaction to the era of
colonialism. Anti-colonialism offers little practical support for states in a post-colonial, post-
Cold War era. In some cases the result has been disintegration and the emergence of the
‘collapsed state’. The revived political movements aimed at democratisation and self-deter-
mination have unleashed forces which may be incompatible with the survival of the current
state system.

Introduction the course of the twentieth century has tended to

The development of political geography has largely
been conditioned by events in Europe and the First
World (Glassner 1996; Taylor 1993). Furthermore,
much of the political geographic literature pertaining
to the state has reflected American democratic and
anti-colonial ideas and ideals (Alexander 1957; De
Blij 1967; Pounds 1963). The complex overlapping
group identities and dependent inter-state relation-
ships, which characterised much of the world prior
to the spread of nationalism associated with the
American and French revolutions, still dominated the
world political map in 1900, but found little favour
in the dominant American political and academic
culture (Smith 1994). In consequence, a century later
multiple identities have often been suppressed in
favour of a dominant nationalism and inter-state
relationships are dominated by a single form: that
between sovereign independent states. Parallel with
this development, ethnic nationalism was widely
replaced by state driven nationalism as the basis of
the nation-state, which has been universally accepted
as the basic building block of the state system. The
application of American derived ideas and ideals to
Africa in the present century has been of prime
importance to the development of the continent.
The development of the state system in Africa in
obscure many of the problems which have bedeviled
the people of the continent. The imposition of
European colonial rule beyond the coastal enclaves
was relatively late, and effectively destroyed many
of the structures of the pre-colonial states and soci-
eties. As a result, the state pattern that emerged at the
end of the colonial period was largely the creation
of the colonial powers and underwritten by the inter-
national community, but it often bore little relation-
ship to African ethnic and political realities (Griffiths
1995). However, the inherited pattern of colonial
boundaries was upheld by the Organisation of
African Unity and the international community in an
effort to contain the destructive power of ethnic
conflict so prevalent in other continents, notably in
Europe. This political settlement has survived until
the present, although it is now under increasing
pressure as the revolutionary concepts of democracy
and self-determination are reevaluated (Darkoh 1996;
Young 1991). In this period of transformation
concepts such as ‘nation-state’, ‘quasi-state’ and ‘col-
lapsed state’, have been applied to African states
(Davidson 1992, Jackson 1990, Zartman 1995). All
three terms offer some understanding of the present
state system. It is a suitable time assess whether the
state pattern of Africa is liable to further substantial
modification with the rise of ethnic nationalisms, or
92
whether a stability similar to that of the Americas has
been achieved. Immediately after the major period of
independence on the continent, Saadia Touval (1963:
v) wrote: ‘Africa is a continent rich in nationalisms
but poor in nations’. The same is true today.
Colonisation and independence
Many of contemporary Africa’s problems are rooted
in the colonial era when the continent was conquered
and apportioned among the European powers. In a
few cases the duration of colonial rule was measured
in centuries, in most in decades and in the case of
Ethiopia less than a decade. However, the European
governments effectively destroyed most of the pre-
colonial political structures and created new states
for their administrative convenience. In this process
the colonial boundaries divided pre-colonial societies
and polities, resulting in multi-ethnic administrative
units. Shifts in pattern of colonies were frequent as
political and financial priorities changed, a pattern
which was to be frozen in place at independence.
Thus Gerteiny (1967: 11) described the creation of
Mauritania in 1903 as ‘one more administrative
solution created by France during her colonial
venture in West Africa’. This implied no recognition
of ethnicity in the definition of its boundaries, let
alone a shared concept of national identity, which
was the underpinning of the European concept of the
‘nation’ within the ‘nation-state’ (Smith 1995). The
result was a highly legalistic application of the
definition of the nation as the population which
happened to live within the boundary fence of the
ex-colonial state at independence, with the inevitable
tensions which this imposed.
Those states which did achieve or retain indepen-
dence during the colonial period, did so often at the
convenience of the colonial powers. Even Ethiopia
was not considered to be a fully independent state,
when it was admitted to the League of Nations in
1923 under special terms which emphasised its
inferior status (Walters 1952). As late as 1941 Great
Britain still expected to obtain some form of protec-
torate over the country it had newly conquered from
the Italians rather than restore its independence
(Marcus 1983). In similar vein, Egypt was unilater-
ally granted independence in 1922, although the
British government retained a large measure of
control over the country until after the Second World
War (Mansfield 1971).
In the Second World War the influence of the
United States became dominant in world affairs. Thus
the call to national freedom enunciated in the Anglo-
American Atlantic Charter in 1941 was viewed by
the American government as applying to colonial
peoples as well as to those under German military
occupation. The complex dependent relationships
between ruler and ruled were to be abolished in
A. J. Christopher
favour of full participatory citizenship for every
people. President Franklin D. Roosevelt summed up
American policy with regard to colonial areas in
these words:
‘I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive
at a stable peace it must involve the development
of backward countries . . . I can’t believe that we
can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the
same time not work to free people all over the
world from a backward colonial policy’ (Kissinger
1994: 401).
The pressures for the independence of Africa came
therefore largely from the international community,
led by the United States and the Soviet Union and
supported by the various newly independent Asian
states. The colonial powers lost legitimacy and any
moral justification for imposing their rule upon alien
peoples. As a result political independence was
achieved relatively rapidly and with comparatively
little bloodshed, with the result that the new states
lacked the legitimacy achieved through the successful
prosecution of a defining national struggle. The War
of Independence in Algeria stands out as a notable
exception to this statement (Horne 1977). The
experience of long anti-colonial struggles in the
ex-Portuguese colonies and Zimbabwe can be viewed
in similar vein. The majority of the newly indepen-
dent African states thus inherited all the trappings
of national sovereignty in international legitimacy,
but with few of the support structures to sustain them,
the ‘quasi-states’. The international community antic-
ipated that through the provision of diplomatic and
financial aid, a series of integrated nation-states could
be created. As Robert Jackson (1990: 26) claimed:
‘at a more fundamental level quasi-states reveal
the same egalitarian and democratic values as
other twentieth-century enfranchisement and lib-
eration movements concerning disadvantaged
class, racial and ethnic minorities. A close parallel
in time is the civil rights movement in the United
States which has virtually identical moral imper-
atives and some comparable institutional features.
Quasi-states are therefore part of a more general
process of self-determination which has affected
domestic as well as international politics in the
latter half of the twentieth century.’
In the ensuing thirty years, the efforts of the
indigenous governing elites were directed towards
maintaining the state structures and constructing
nation-states through the inculcation of a sense of
nationhood in the populaces. This was often under-
taken by highly coercive means under one-party and
military dictatorships, which ultimately destroyed the
complex networks of patronage which underpinned
the system (Bayart 1993). Indeed, the African quest
to emulate the European concept of the ‘nation-state’
has been termed a curse placed upon the continent
‘Nation-states’, ‘quasi-states’, and ‘collapsed-states’ in contemporary Africa
(Davidson 1992). The Organisation of African Unity
was established in 1963 with a strong mandate to
prevent potentially destructive challenges to the
state system and it was able to diffuse the majority
of the conflict situations which followed with the
support of the international community (Cervenka
1977). However, ethnic tensions were considered
inevitable and balkanisation the most likely result but
for this support. In consequence, attempts to create
ethnic separatist states were ruthlessly suppressed,
whether in Biafra in 1967 or Katanga in 1960. In
the latter case military intervention by the interna-
tional community in the form of the United Nations
was required to reimpose the unity of the country.
Current secessionist movements, including those in
Cabinda and the Southern Sudan, have similarly not
elicited international support and generally have
incurred outright condemnation. Furthermore, the
detailed configuration of the colonial boundaries
was maintained with the result that many ethnic
groups remained divided after independence. This
allowed for the Somali irredentist movements to be
defeated in the neighbouring states with Somali
populations.
If fragmentation was resisted, there was little
attempt to create wider unions or federations. Those
that were created were generally formed at the time
of independence. A few crossed the former imperial
boundary lines and so had to overcome the separate
linguistic and legal legacies of the colonial era. Thus
the British and Italian sectors of Somaliland were
united at the behest of the pan-Somali movement,
which had gained control of both pre-independence
governments prior to July 1960. The union’s subse-
quent effective dissolution has not been so readily
recognised by the international community, despite
the cooperative administration of the (ex-British)
Republic of Somaliland. In similar vein the southern
section of the British Cameroons united with the
ex-French Cameroun in a federal structure, later
converted to a union. In contrast the northern sector
of the British Cameroons voted for incorporation into
Nigeria, with which it had administratively been
merged since the First World War. Similarly, after a
limited consultation process, Eritrea was federated
with Ethiopia in 1952, but annexed ten years later,
with disastrous results.
The unresolved status of the Moroccan occupation
of the former Spanish Sahara in 1975 has remained
one of the most controversial and divisive issues on
the continent (Slowe 1990). The attempt to unite the
previously separate colonial entities was resisted by
many of the inhabitants of the Western Sahara and
the status of the territory remains to be determined
by an internationally supervised referendum, which
is still pending. It might be added that the majority
of the members of the Organisation of African Unity
rejected Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara as
being contrary to the spirit of the Charter and recog-
93
nised the government in exile which controls only
small portions of the national territory.
After achieving independence few governments
were willing to give up their newly won power or
territory. Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form
the United Republic of Tanzania, after the violent
overthrow of the sultanate on the islands. However,
separate administrations have been maintained in the
two sections of the country. Indeed in 1995 the
Zanzibari secessionist movement was only narrowly
defeated at the polls. The Federation of Senegambia,
between Senegal and Gambia, lasted seven years
(1982–1989), but proved to be unsustainable as the
leaders of the smaller state were unwilling to sur-
render sovereignty and power. The numerous pan-
Arab unions, mostly devised by Libya, and early
pan-African unions, mostly devised by Ghana, did
not achieve any permanency. Even the existence of
a joint ruling political party in the Cape Verde Islands
and Guinea-Bissau was inadequate to forge a polit-
ical union between the two states once independence
had been achieved.
The issues of continued White rule in the South,
apartheid and racially defined separatism in South
Africa tended to dominate the continental political
agenda from the 1960s to the 1990s. The end of
White rule in South Africa can not be regarded as
decolonisation as the country had been granted
formal independence under the Statute of
Westminster in 1931. It was portrayed instead as a
matter of self-determination for the African majority
within a unitary state. In order to prevent this
occurrence, the South African government devised a
programme of state partition, based on ethnic parti-
tion (Christopher 1994). Four ‘independent’ states
emerged: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and
Ciskei. None received international diplomatic recog-
nition as fragmentation on ethnic lines was counter
to the principles of the Organisation of African Unity.
Government plans failed as a result of the resistance
of the African population to the programme of
political exclusion and international sanctions.
Consequently the independence boundary was
reestablished in 1994 and the experiment in imposed
ethnic partition abandoned and the four ephemeral
states reincorporated. The emergence of a democratic
South Africa may have unleashed the possibilities for
territorial expansion as originally envisaged by suc-
cessive White-controlled governments until the 1960s
(Hyam 1972). These were thwarted by international
resistance to any extension of South African racial
segregationism and apartheid. At the present time the
prospects for the survival of the enclave state of
Lesotho appear particularly problematical as the
original reasons for its continuing separate existence
have been overcome (Lemon 1996).
94
Stability and instability
The long period of relative stability of political
boundaries may now be ended. The close of the Cold
War has dismantled the international balance of
power exposed Africa to many of the tensions which
exist elsewhere, not least the mobilisation of ethnic
power. The end of colonialism and the end of White
rule in the southern sector of the continent in the
1990s has focused attention upon the cohesion of
many multi-ethnic African states and the aspirations
held by minority groups (Mikesell and Murphy
1991). At one extreme secessionism is still rife, with
attempts to create separate states. However, the
leaders of most minority groups still seek some
political accommodation within the existing state
system, through local autonomy or power sharing
arrangements.
The successful war of secession of Eritrea from
Ethiopia raises the question of the continued stability
of other states (Gurdon 1994). The independence of
Eritrea represented the reestablishment of a colonial
boundary and the grant of independence denied to the
former Italian colony in 1952 and so was not taken
as a challenge to the entire state structure of the
continent. Somaliland, Western Sahara and Zanzibar
appear as other areas where the resurrection of
colonial and pre-colonial structures stress the existing
order but could be interpreted within the Organisation
of African Unity’s guidelines. Elections or referenda
have been proposed as solutions to all these
problems, but the issues of voter eligibility, intimi-
dation and fraud have raised questions over the
validity of the results or projected results.
Question marks hover over the long-term viability
of states such as South Africa, Nigeria and Zaire,
where ethnic tensions are always capable of being
exacerbated by political leaders as a result of deteri-
orating economic conditions among certain sections
of the population. Some recognition of the force of
ethnicity and the relevance of pre-colonial history
will be essential to avoid the twentieth century
secessionist problems which continue to beset
Europe. Indeed, it has been suggested that the
security afforded by a constitutional right to secede
may be sufficient to hold states together (Buchanan
1991). Protracted secessionist movements have
characterised many African states in the post-inde-
pendence era and their full development may only be
possible once the binding elements of anti-colo-
nialism have faded (Mayall and Simpson 1992).
A recent phenomenon in Africa has been the
emergence of the ‘collapsed state’, where the central
administration and often most of the local adminis-
trations have disintegrated and no effective ‘national’
government is functioning (Zartman 1995). Few
states collapsed at independence, despite their weak
political structures. The former Belgian Congo
(Zaire) was a rare exception and was revived as a
A. J. Christopher
result of international cooperation and internal
coercion. The recent disintegration of some govern-
ments and civil societies have usually followed the
removal of the constraints of the ‘strong’ centralised
dictatorships which were prevalent on the continent.
The networks of power, influence and patronage
which provided the means of maintaining a unified
society broke down, disintegrating into smaller and
more localised networks (Bayart 1993).
In some countries all semblance of a unified gov-
ernment has disappeared, as in Somalia, with the
rival clan leaders vying for power, even within the
confines of the capital, Mogadishu. In others a recog-
nised central government is in effective control of
only limited parts of the country, as in Angola, Sierra
Leone and Liberia. In the latter case what constitutes
the central government is dependent upon the inter-
pretation of the regional peace keeping force, which
is attempting to mediate between the warring
factions. Occasionally the national leader provided
the only focus of patronage and influence in other
countries such as Zaire, leaving a highly fragmented
and often ineffective administration dependent upon
the skills of the ruling clique to maintain the facade
of national unity. One of the features of such
situations has been the re-emergence of pre-colonial
patterns of societies which were riven by the
imposition of international boundaries, but now are
united in their remoteness from governmental control
(Raison 1993; Richards 1996). In this respect inter-
national boundaries as depicted on the map do not
reflect the reality on the ground. Whether such col-
lapsed states constitute a stage in the process towards
a significant redefinition of state boundaries, or only
a temporary phase in a ‘national’ history is as yet
unclear. The experience of Uganda after suffering
military dictatorship, the collapse of civil society,
foreign invasion and civil war appears to suggest that
resurrection is possible. This was made possible
through the political accommodation of regional
ethnic interests within the revived governmental
structures (Mamdani 1996).
Seemingly intractable ethnic conflicts, such as
those in Rwanda and Burundi, continue to undermine
the stability of neighbouring countries as the state
system remains remarkably interdependent. In
Rwanda and Burundi the conflict between the Tutsi
and Hutu ethnic groups, which share the same geo-
graphical state space, yet are capable of inflicting
severe atrocities, including attempted genocide, upon
one another suggests that the ethnic conflicts
associated with Europe have an continuing African
dimension. However, whereas the conflict in Bosnia-
Herzegovina has been labelled as a ‘national’
struggle, yet that in Rwanda has been condemned as
‘tribal’ (Mayers, Klak and Koehl 1996). This
suggests a dual standard is applied to secessionism
and nation building in Europe and Africa. Indeed
endemic civil war still afflicts several states so that
‘Nation-states’, ‘quasi-states’, and ‘collapsed-states’ in contemporary Africa
the map of Africa does not reflect the situation in
reality. The Angolan civil war has been protracted by
the deep ethnic rivalries between the Mbundu and
Ovimbundu groups. Although the leaders of both
seek control of the entire state, the question may be
raised as to whether partition or a high degree of
autonomy would result in a more peaceful and pros-
perous future for both rather than the continued
enforced unification (Gurr and Harff 1994).
The application of the concept of national self-
determination to Africa will have to be re-examined
as the pre-colonial ethnic groupings begin to reassert
themselves with continued moves towards greater
democratisation (Decalo 1992; Wiseman 1992).
Multi-party elections in some cases have been
described as little more than the conduct of ‘ethnic
censuses’, indicating the continuing fragility of civil
society (Horowitz 1985). The prospects for renewed
ethnic mobilisation are therefore present within most
states experimenting with multi-party democracy.
Self-determination in Africa may therefore result in
the need to explore parallels with developments in
eastern Europe where a large number of former
minority ethnic groups have either gained national
independence or increased autonomy in the 1990s
in the wake of the process of liberalisation and
democratisation.
In a highly significant development, the new
(1993) Ethiopian constitution offers a legal mecha-
nism for the secession of the ethnically defined
provinces (Abbink 1995). Such an eventuality is
designed to be exercised as a last resort only if polit-
ical compromise is impossible. The original concept
follows the principles laid down in the former Soviet
Union constitution designed to overcome the
negative aspects of nationalism in the construction of
a new society. The Ethiopian precedent may be the
forerunner of other constitutional measures seeking
to accommodate the problems associated with the
imposition of the European derived concept of the
nation-state upon the African continent. The basic
philosophy behind the move is to defuse conflict and
emphasise the advantages of voluntary national
association as opposed to the enforced incorporation
and suppression of ethnic identity under the previous,
highly centralised, imperial and republican regimes.
Indeed, the drawing of new regional boundaries for
local government, which has often accompanied
democratisation, has also opened up the possibility
of creating sub-national governments capable of
demanding higher degrees of self-determination even
independence. As at the end of the colonial era, when
the presence of functioning administrations offered
an organisational basis for the post-colonial state, so
the establishment of functioning provinces with a
measure of autonomy may offer the basis for future
self-determination. This was clearly the case in the
secession of Biafra (the former Eastern Province of
Nigeria). The repetition of such an eventuality was
95
subsequently countered by the periodic redrawing of
the Nigerian provincial boundaries has been to
minimise the possibilities of provinces acting as foci
for ethnic secessionism by fragmenting the larger
ethnic communities (Williams 1994). In contrast, the
new Ethiopian provinces are designed to encourage
continued association and the survival of the state.
This promises to offer the possibility of the recogni-
tion of multiple identities within the one ‘nation’.
In South Africa the new provincial dispensation
appears to have followed some aspects of the
Ethiopian pattern, with secessionist possibilities in
the most populous province inhabited by the Zulu
nation and another with a non-African majority
(Christopher 1995). However, this approach has been
advanced as a means of returning to the recognition
that within a ‘nation’, people often have multiple
identities, which need not be the source of conflict.
The South African Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture,
Science and Technology, Brigitte Mabandla (1996:
25) has suggested that:
‘Building this national consciousness and recog-
nising ethnic identities are not mutually exclusive
activities. Having a Zulu, Afrikaner, Jewish or
Malay identity need not undermine our sense of
being South African. The role we have set our-
selves is to develop a complex, inclusive and non-
prescriptive notion of what constitutes the national
culture’.
However, the proposed new constitution for the
province of KwaZulu-Natal, which provides that
residents be required to ‘defend the territory of
the province’, has been condemned by the Constitu-
tional Court as ‘plainly intended to legitimise seces-
sion’ (Rickard, 1996: 4).
Economic integration in Africa is proceeding
slowly. Continental or regional political unity
remains an ideal rather than a reality (Esedebe 1994).
The Economic Community of West African States
and the Southern African Development Community
are the two most significant and developed entities
(Gibb 1995). The former has already assumed a
military capability through the intervention in
Liberia, while the latter is proving to be increasingly
a forum for South African advancement. In this
respect parallels with the developments in western
Europe are instructive. There are significant impli-
cations for the erosion of the nation-state as previ-
ously laboriously constructed, both from ‘above’ but
also from ‘below’ (Kolinsky 1984). Small national-
ities, previously subsumed in larger entities, may be
offered an environment where the economic costs of
separation are greatly reduced and the whole issue of
identity can be reassessed within the security of a
multi-state union (Smith 1995).
96
Comment
In examining the development of states, nations and
nationalities in Africa, issues revolving around the
differing international moralities applied to political
conflict and state formation also need to be
addressed. The basic concept of the quasi-state
suggests the intervention of the international com-
munity in the processes involved in the establishment
and the continued maintenance of the African state
system. The imposition of one-party and military
dictatorships, which this frequently involved, was
tolerated as part of the process of nation-building.
Furthermore, the imposition of the European based
concept of the nation-state upon the continent at
independence required a long period of consolida-
tion, which was achieved through the continued
international understanding not to disturb the terri-
torial integrity of the new states.
The period of relative quiescence on the African
state map is at an end, as the effects of the events of
1991 and 1992 in Europe and the collapse of the
international order which brought the present African
state system into being have their impact. A great
many issues remain unresolved, which have a direct
impact upon the future of the continent. The col-
lapsed state is one result where the internal and
international support systems become inadequate to
support the state structure. The most problematic is
the development of the multi-ethnic ‘quasi-state’
undergoing the process of democratisation. Self-
determination may result in significant changes in the
political map of Africa as sub-national regional
governments are elected and act as rivals to the
centralised powers of the internationally recognised
states. The democratic alternatives may be secession
or the recognition of the more complex intra-state
relationships and multiple personal identities, which
characterised the multi-national empires of a century
ago. Both courses present major problems for the
peoples involved as few governments are willing to
surrender power or allow their territories to be par-
titioned. However, as in Europe, where the emer-
gence of strong supra-national organisations has
enabled sub-national groupings to stake their claim
to national recognition, regional economic integra-
tion will allow suppressed minorities to raise
demands for greater political participation. The full
impact of the application of the concept of self-
determination in Africa is still to come.
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