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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Why Ghana is Not a Nation-State |
Author: | Skalnik, Peter |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | Africa Insight |
Volume: | 22 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 66-72 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | nation Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations colonialism History and Exploration Women's Issues |
Abstract: | The main thesis of this article is that the thirty-odd years that Ghana has been an independent State were not marked by any significant progress in nationbuilding. The author argues that factors like general political instability, persisting tribalism, economic malaise and the growing gap between the pace of development in the south and the north of the country effectively prevent the formation of a nation-State. He examines in detail three areas of evidence for the nonexistence of the nation-State. The gap between the development of regions, especially the country's north and south not only remained but deepened; the reasons for dissidence among the Ewe, who live on both sides of the colonial and now postcolonial border between Ghana and Togo, were not removed; and ethnic nationalism among the smaller groups in various parts of Ghana, such as the Nanumba and Konkomba in Nanun in the underdeveloped north, has entered a new phase in which serious conflicts are being solved without recourse to the modern State's mediation. Ethnic identities are thus strengthened at the cost of the ideal of national unity. Note, ref. |