Africa’s ‘Big States Crisis’ Has Deep Historical Roots

Howard W. French

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One of the most important problems in modern African history is also among the most widely misunderstood.

For decades, both journalists and scholars have lamented that Africa’s borders were drawn up by outside powers, beginning with Europe’s so-called Scramble for Africa, between 1881 and World War I. This threw all sorts of linguistically, religiously and politically disparate groups into newly formed colonies and, soon afterward, new African nations, in which they were suddenly forced to try to get along together in the task of building independent republics. ...