editor@adonis-abbey.com UK: 0207 795 8187 / Nigeria:+234 705 807 8841
ISSN : 1744-2532 E- ISSN 2516-5305
To buy or subscribe,
please email:
sales@adonis-abbey.com
The contemporary African state is a descendant of an arbitrary colonial system that was designed as a tool of exploitation, oppression, and dominance. Today, despite Africa’s long years of independence from these colonial administrative units, its origin largely remains exogenous, rather than evolving out of the relationships of groups and individuals in African societies. A state, using the classical definition of Max Weber, is a community of human beings with the control of the lawful and acceptable utilization of force or power within a given territory’. In many respects, the majority of African states hardly possess these features, which is why most of them are classified as fragile, failed, or failing states. It is because Africa consists of states with a community of varied and occasionally clashing linguistic, religious, and ethnic identities; they hardly can control violence or lay claim to the monopoly of force legitimately; their frequent predatory nature fails the test of legitimacy; and their territoriality is generally at best hesitant and contested. It is evident that Africa’s large-scale failure and societal exit are partly caused by the exogeneity of Africa's connection with colonial imperialism, the absence of underlying norms and networks of social organizations, and embeddedness. Africa still suffers from legitimacy deficits such as rent-seeking, patterns of predation, urban hegemony, administrative falloff, and neo-patrimonialism. The inability of African states to resolve these problems has often led to their classification as failed, juridical, suspended, weak, collapsed, borrowed, and imposed states. This is because many years after the exit of colonial powers, African states have largely developed, despite theoretical exploration of Africa’s contemporary issues. This only points to the fact that Africa’s nature and existence have habitually, notwithstanding some infamous exemptions, evaded theoretical questioning.
This has caused 21st-century Africa to continually face huge challenges ranging from political, social, economic, cultural, environmental, religious, identity, and ethnic differences. Although the majority of African states are currently under democratic regimes, nothing has really changed, as most African leaders in the post-colonial era seem to have devised the same strategy used by the colonial administration to oppress and maintain long-term control over the people. Liberation movements, the press, and civil society organizations, which were formerly vanguards of freedom from colonialism, are today very docile and obstruction to Africa’s development due to excessive coercion, a high level of corruption, political instability, and the inability to consolidate a shared vision for Africa’s sustainable development. This has hindered the drive for inclusive development on a continent faced with huge service delivery deficiencies, unemployment, inequalities, hunger, poverty, limited access to education, a high level of gender discrimination, violence, armed conflict, crime, the re-emergence of military incursions, poor administrative performance by those at the helm of affairs, and corruption, among others. Corruption in contemporary Africa has remained the cause of a loss of public trust and suspicion of African leaders within and outside Africa, especially by foreign investors. It has not only eroded principles such as equality, merit, neutrality, representativeness, and accountability; it has continually scared or discouraged some investors from investing in Africa, hence the low economic growth in Africa. It has also been responsible for service delivery protests across some African states in recent times. Countries like South Africa, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Gabon, and many others have faced huge protests over poor service delivery. In some severe cases, it has provoked the unlawful intervention of the military into politics in Africa.
Today, in addition to its internal problems, Africa still suffers from the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars. The effects of these wars are already being felt in the areas of food security, rising prices of household commodities, crude oil, and general human security. While Africa is still struggling to survive the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars pose another major threat to the global economy, with many African countries being directly affected. These wars may likely impact food security in Africa. Both through availability and pricing in some food crops, particularly wheat and sunflower, as well as socio-economic recovery and growth, triggered by rising uncertainties in global financial markets and supply chain systems. African leaders need to brace up and devise appropriate adaptability or sustainability mechanisms to cope with and address the fallouts of the on-going global wars in the Middle East and Europe. In addition, there is a need to examine Africa’s contemporary problems from a more pragmatic and Afrocentric perspective in order to achieve the expected sustainable development in Africa. This is because for so many years, Africa has excessively relied on Euro-centric solutions rather than Afrocentric antidotes that can deliver positive outcomes. There is a need to discuss Africa’s numerous problems through the lens of re-birth and re-thinking of Africa’s strategies for combating these contemporary challenges. This feat can be achieved through well-articulated research and scientific discussions on platforms that can promote Afrocentric solutions to African problems. African Renaissance provides a viable means through which research and discussions on Africa’s contemporary issues can be disseminated to audience within and outside Africa.
The African Renaissance offers a rare opportunity for scholars and researchers across disciplines to discuss and disseminate Africa’s expanding issues or problems through research. The current African Renaissance publication covers topical African issues like Pan Africanism and the challenges of economic reconstruction in Africa, land grabbing, African parliaments, politics-administration dichotomy, nation-building, corruption, local government challenges, terrorism, migration crisis, political economy issues, climate change effects on food security, stained China-Africa relations, cultural-ethnic identity issues, inequality, the anti-corruption crusade, and policies against financial crimes in Africa. Driven by Afrocentric solutions, this current issue of the African Renaissance critically delves into the discussion of Africa’s problems from an Afrocentric viewpoint, albeit focusing on Africa and its relations with other continents. It is expected that the findings reported in this issue of African Renaissance will yield positive outcomes that can help Africa speedily achieve its long-expected sustainable development.