THE RELEVANCE OF IDENTITY MANAGEMENT AND ITS EFFECT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELECTED SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

The territorial formations of African modern nation-states, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, discussed in this study are unique in their development since the levers for rationalizing the obligations of duty and concern between the nation’s administrative structures and the indigenous nation-community were imposed by ‘colonial settlers’ with neither ethnic nor native allegiance to the indigenous inhabitants. The motivation for the ‘colonial settlers’ ranges from the formation of a nation-state superimposed on existing ethnic nations for an imported community of black people unable to find accommodation as legitimate identities elsewhere, to the financial prospecting for wealth. Regardless of the motivation for colonial settlements, in all three instances of territorial conversion into modern nation states, the colonial identity structures clashed with the ethnic nation’s identity structures. The imported identity traditions used to establish legitimate and functional identities of the nation-state subverted and replaced the pre-colonial ethnic nation’s customs and mechanisms used for identifying the people of the ethnic nation. This subversion disrupted the relationship between the inhabitants of the nation-community, their inherited allegiance to the nation-state and the associations between the indigenous inhabitants and the settlers.

Consequently, this thesis seeks to examine the fractures in the evolution of national-identity within nation-states that have used unfamiliar European and colonial identity management structures and mechanisms. While the Liberia and Sierra Leone systems of identity administration that have resulted in nation-state collapse contrast with the endurance and integrity of Zambia’s national-identity ecosystem, all three countries based their systems on the unfamiliar European national identity structures and mechanisms. Using qualitative analysis, and inductive logic, the thesis rejects Davis and Huttenback’s theory that views the national identities of post-colonial communities as a result of the transformation of the component identities of the indigenous inhabitants and ‘colonial settlers’. Further, it challenges Basil Davidson, and Walter Rodney’s wholesale renunciation of modernity in the identity-management ecosystems of these nation-states.

The findings of the study revealed that as much as primordial ethnic identity anchors remain strong, purposely designed national identity instruments and tools that promote recognition, equity and parity such as Zambian Humanism, will sustain multiple ethnic identities within a structured nation-state. Building on the research, the study recommends a blended approach to identity management in sub-Saharan nation-states conceived to promote sustained national identity ecosystems for development and patria potestas in contrast to imported and completely alien national identity solutions in the nation formation process.