state and nation building in Arica

Essay by benedict77University, Bachelor'sA, November 2014

download word file, 11 pages 0.0

African countries are independent and sovereign; however, most of the African countries are going under stress. This is largely because most of the African states are not nation-states, where African leaders neglect nation-building and rather focus on state-building. They seek to provide human security and other needs necessary to build the state. However, by state-building, it is an act which is at the expense of others religious and ethnic groups within that state. Hence, this has spearheaded most African conflicts due to deprivation of human needs. Therefore, this essay seeks to validate to which extent African leaders are good at state building and not nation-building.

State-building can be defined as the establishment, re-establishment, and strengthening of a public structure in a given territory capable of delivering public goods. Nation-building is the most common form of a process of collective identity formation with a view to legitimizing public power within a given territory (Bogdandy, Häußler, Hanschmann, Raphael 2005).

Nation-building should be in a bid to accommodate and build good relations between cultural, ethnic, racial, religious and other salient social identities; however, nation-building is a big challenge to most African leaders (Masunungure 2006). According to Mandela (1965) a leader is like a shepherd, he stays behind the flock, letting the most nibble to go on ahead were upon others follow not realising that all along they are being directed from behind therefore, leadership is the probity of an individual actor where a leader demonstrates leadership through their personal characteristics and how they behave. Bernard C (1938) defines leadership as "the ability of a superior to influence the behaviour of subordinates and pursue them to follow a particular course of action. In this essay a nation building can be understood as the unification, elimination of segregation in society through religion, ethnicity, and colour...