So I was recently reading about the way that European boundaries of the African colonies that became modern nations effectively ignored ethnic and cultural lines of the groups living there. This has contributed to a significant amount of unrest since independence because nations contained too many conflicting groups or struggled to form a national identity. I was curious why more African leaders like Thomas Sankara among others who wanted to challenge the post-colonial status quo didn't try to find a form of organization that was more suited to the huge diversity of groups living in their countries. These leaders seemed interested in dismantling many of the other forms of post-colonial domination but I've never heard of any attacking this huge factor preventing African self-sufficiency. Was the idea just not considered or was it just to much of a self-handicap to decentralize your nation without significant numbers of other countries doing the same?
There are a couple of ways to answer this question.
First off, it is important to realize that nationalism was an important force in anti-colonial movements from 1940 to independence. In advocating against European rule, activists also had to articulate a vision for what would come after, and in the 1940s or 1950s the notion that instead of being defined and divided by "tribe" or by religion, at independence all people would share a common national identity. E.g. instead of being Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Nupe, Hausa, Fulani, they would all be Nigerians.
So, for many of the first generation of post-colonial leadership, developing the nation-state was the goal, and creating a strong national identity went hand-in-hand with de-emphasizing ethnic identity.
But of course, substituting a unified national identity for local or ethnic identities is easier said than done. Take for instance the efforts of Hastings Banda in Malawi. Part of his national project was changing the name from Nyasaland to Malawi, in order to make reference to the historical Maravi kingdom. That is, emphasizing connections a strong pre-colonial state in turn justified Malawi as an "ancient" state, not a historical accident of colonial boundary drawing. But, Banda was not able to exert a monopoly on historical memory, and Leroy Vail shares an anecdote in the preface to Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa of a Tumbuka schoolteacher who called for a secessionist movement like contemporary Biafra, and a university professor who spoke of a fictional "Nkhamanga empire" as a precursor Tumbuka state.
Now on the other hand, there were several among the first generation of independence leaders who advocated for Pan-african unity, notably among them Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure, and later Julius Nyerere.
Nkrumah famously called for a "United States of Africa", urging for both economic and political integration of African states into a supra-national federal body. To get a sense of Nkrumah's thinking, I recommend reading his book Africa Must Unite!.
And, these calls for supra-national unity also found expression in concrete policy efforts. For example, in the early 1960s the Casablanca group of nations pushed for something like "the United States of Africa" but were opposed by the monrovia group that included Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia and Togo. The latter group favored economic integration but wished to maintain national autonomy. This debate resulted in the formation of the Organization for African Unity, which took the form of a voluntary association more in-line with the Monrovia groups ideas.
There were also other attempts at supra-national federations like the Mali Federation, Union of African States and the proposed-but-never-implemented East African Federation. However, these various efforts all fell apart, either because of squabbling nationalist leaderships or because of change in regime among member governments.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!