Federalism and Decentralization in Africa

Table of Contents

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Introduction: Factors of Decentralization in Africa

   Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

   Abstract

   By the mid-1990s, a whole complex of factors had crystalized on the African continent that made decentralization in demand even in those countries where unitarism and centralism were particularly firmly rooted. The end of the Cold War and the attainment of independence exposed the inefficiency and instability of many African states. During the same period, international financial institutions singled out “bad governance” as the main reason preventing young nations from developing. As a result, the demand for decentralization of management models—including the political field—turned into an imperative, without taking into account how to receive loans and assistance in foreign markets. The mentioned processes and trends actualize the study of the mechanisms, forms, and models of decentralization practiced today in Africa.

3. African Experience of Federal Building: Historical Background

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Chapter 2. Federalism and Colonialism: History, Practice, and Lessons from Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      The short-lived Central African Federation, created by British colonialists in 1952, represents one of the most failed federal experiments of the post-war era. In forming this entity, the British violated almost all the textbook principles of creating federal states. But the most important defect of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was that instead of building a system that harmonized the relations of the white minority and provided it with guarantees of self-determination in an overwhelmingly non-white environment, this federation was designed to perpetuate a pattern of racial domination of this minority. This congenital injury rendered the Central African Federation unviable and doomed to destruction in 1963, making its life cycle very short. Nevertheless, its brief appearance on the world map was that it significantly discredited federalism in the eyes of the political elites of post-colonial states.

   3. Chapter 3. Federalism and Expansion: The Collapse of the Federal Experiment in Cameroon and Aftermath

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      The Federal Republic of Cameroon (1962–1972) became one of the most striking examples of federal dysfunction in Africa, freed from the colonialists. In fact, the goal of the federalist deal concluded after decolonization between the elites of French-speaking and English-speaking Cameroon. This was not the dispersal of power in a diverse society nor the protection of the English-speaking minority, but the territorial absorption of one part of the country by the other. The path to this “fraudulent contract” was tortuous and complex; it took a little over ten years. The irony, however, is that the perversion of the federal idea began to affect Cameroonian statehood in the most negative way after several decades. The war for the independence of the so-called Ambazonia, waged by separatists in the former English-speaking enclaves, shows that neglecting the “federal principle” where it seems to be in demand can be very costly.

4. African Experience of Federal Building: Contemporaneity

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Chapter 4. “The Black’s Man Burden”: The Nigerian Federation as a Paradox

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      Federalization of Nigeria was not an authentically developed process since it was initiated in 1914 by the British colonial administration. The interests of the local population were not taken into account in these transformations, and local elites did not feel the peacemaking potential of federalism. By assigning each of the country's three leading ethnic groups its own territorial entity, the British created the preconditions for a future internal conflict. The positive work of federal mechanisms in Nigeria began only after the reconstruction of the basic foundations of the original model: the fragmentation of three hegemonic ethnic groups assigned to different subjects of the federation radically reduced the intensity of interethnic confrontation. Nigerian federalism remained ethnic, but the ethnic principle ceased to be dominant. However, the Nigerian federation still faces very significant challenges. “True federalism,” the discussion of which in modern Nigeria is becoming more active and widespread, could adapt the federation to new challenges.

   3. Chapter 5. Forcing Union: The Federal Takeover of Eritrea in Historical Perspective

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      Ethiopia has turned to the federal model twice. These stages are not similar to each other in appearance, but they are closely interconnected. It was the “imperial federalism” of the 1950s and 1960s, through which the Abyssinian monarchical elites swallowed Eritrea, that led to the emergence in the mid-1990s of an extremely distinctive and highly unstable model of ethnic federalism. The response to the post-war quasi-federal union of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which completely ignored the demand for national self-determination, was its mirror opposite: an original federation in which the self-determination of peoples does not face any serious constitutional restrictions at all. The imperial legacy still predetermines the dynamics of Ethiopian federalism, and its final overcoming is a condition for its successful reform. In its current state, Ethiopian federalism plays a paradoxically ambiguous role: on the one hand, it ensures the internal integrity of the state within its current borders, and on the other hand, it remains a major factor in its fragility and potential destabilization.

   4. Chapter 6. Decentralization Under Apartheid and Democracy: South Africa as a Unitary Federation

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      Throughout the reconstruction of the 1990s, accompanied by the official transition to federalism, South Africa nevertheless retained some basic features of the proto-federal structure that it had acquired in the previous decades—during the long era of white minority rule. In democratic South Africa, federalism still remains a topic of heated political debate, since different political forces see ways to achieve their own political goals in promoting or, conversely, suppressing the “federal principle”. Even before coming to power, the African National Congress was suspicious of federalism, seeing it as a racist ploy that fragmented the political will of the black majority. In subsequent years, one of the conditions for the monopoly rule of the ANC was excessively centralized federalism, depriving the provinces of political subjectivity. At the same time, the gradual erosion of the political hegemony of the ANC may trigger a process of rapid renovation of federal statehood in South Africa, the consequences of which are still difficult to foresee.

   5. Chapter 7. The Comoros: An Island Federalism

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      This chapter examines the case of the Comoros Islands and provides another example of how a complex, in this case an island, state, while clearly perceiving federalism as an onerous burden, is yet unable to give it up. The Comorian authorities fear that controlled instability within the federation will turn into uncontrolled disintegration in an untarist context. As a result, the small island state shows how the federalist matrix, at the will of political actors (or without it), can be transformed into the glue that holds together land segments separated from each other by the sea.

5. African Alternatives to Federalism: Decentralization of Unitary Contexts

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Chapter 8. Clan Federalism in Somalia

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      Somalia is a country where decentralization realizes from above (by initiative of clan's elites). Federalism is a way of achieving political goals for Somali clans. This is a country that not only has a constitutional name, but also politically strives (even if not very successfully so far) to become a federation, because for it this, in fact, is the only opportunity to save itself as a political, economic, social integrity. The diversity of the Somali administrative-territorial palette is dizzying, but if this swinging state manages to survive, it will be exclusively in a federal guise.

   3. Chapter 9. “The Kurds of Africa”: How the Tuaregs Were Left Without Their Own State

      Leonid Issaev, Andrey Zakharov

      Abstract

      This chapter shows how the dispersal of power is promoted at the grassroots level: here the focus is on the socio-political initiatives of the Tuaregs of the Sahel, in which they propose all kinds of confederation/federation options either to their fellow tribesmen or to the governments of the countries in whose territories they live. It is concluded that the central government of Mali and Niger, as well as Tuareg nationalists, again find themselves situational allies, since they have one main enemy—Islamist radical jihadists.

6. Backmatter