The state and African choices

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Last week marked the 125th anniversary of the conclusion of the infamous 1884-1885 European leaders Berlin conference on Africa to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation and exploitation of the legendary riches of the African World. It is arguably germane that this anniversary slipped by with scarce notice but some of the enduring consequences of the curse of Berlin on Africa cannot be ignored. The prevailing grave politics and socioeconomics in particularly Nigeria, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Kenya attest to this.


These states of conquest (as well as the rest on the continent) have largely remained what they were since their 1885 terms of reference albeit with some doubtful African configuration since January 1956, beginning in the Sudan. Pointedly, two-thirds of the 15 million Africans murdered by African regimes in genocide and other conflicts on the continent since May 1966, i.e., the beginning of the Igbo genocide, are in Nigeria, the Sudan, DRC and Kenya. Why and How does a state exist to dominate, exploit, and, in such cases as in Nigeria and the Sudan, attempt to destroy some of its constituent nations?


As everyone knows, the states that Europe created in Africa in the aftermath of Berlin cannot lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of occupation. Such change was and never is the mission of these states but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest.

As in Berlin, states are not a gift from the gods but relationships painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on planet Earth to pursue aspirations and interests mutually envisioned by these same human beings within a designated historico-geographical environment. The flourishing age of organically articulated African-own states to radically transform depressing African fortunes in the contemporary world has already begun.