A Diverse Continent showcases 36 textiles from 18 countries representing the diversity of African culture and textile-making traditions. Africa is, arguably, the most diverse continent in the world. Its Its 54 countries and 11 territories are home to an estimated distinct ethnic groups speaking over languages.
Victoria Dyas August 22nd, Explaining African Ethnic Diversity 1 comment Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. About the author Victoria Dyas. Leave a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Related Posts News from the Department. Mackenzie Book Prize September 19th, 1. Justice and Security Research Programme JSRP and the future The JSRP drew to a close in but many of the researchers and partners involved in the programme continue to work on the issues and theories developed during the lifetime of the programme.
The JSRP reached the end of its grant in spring but several outputs from the programme are scheduled for publication in the coming months. The […]. This post contextualises the constitutional and legal framework within which the recent anti-religious conversion Ordinances in India need to be viewed.
Burundi and Rwanda, as well as Sudan, are candidates for this category, though all also have aspects of the fourth, and final, category. The fourth category, the zero-sum conflict situation, consists of states embroiled in acute crisis with no collective sense of identification, no shared values, and no common vision for the nation. The framework of the nation-state is perceived as an imposition by the colonial invaders, now perpetuated by the dominant group whose identity defines the national character.
Such definition might be explicit, as in apartheid South Africa, where race and ethnicity were factors in allocating or denying the rights of citizenship, or in the Sudan, where the identification of the country as Arab and Islamic carries inherent stratification and discrimination on racial, ethnic, and religious grounds.
These conflicts are the most difficult to manage within the unity framework; depending on the particular circumstance of the case, they may call for fundamental restructuring and perhaps partition. At present, most African countries are addressing the racial and ethnic identity issues through a pacifying system of distribution and allocation—a form of ad hoc pragmatic management rather than a strategic approach.
What makes the issue of identity particularly acute for the continent is that it touches not only on politics, but also on economics and the organizational capacity for a self-generating and sustainable development from within. There are four policy options for managing pluralistic identities.
One is to create a national framework with which all can identify without any distinction based on race, ethnicity, tribe, or religion. This option, of course, best suits those countries that are highly homogeneous. The second option is to create a pluralistic framework to accommodate nations that are racially, ethnically, culturally, or religiously diverse.
Under this option, probably a federal arrangement, groups would accommodate each other on the basis of the principle of live and let live, but with a more uniting commitment to the common purpose of national identification. In the third case, for more seriously divided countries, some form of power sharing combined with decentralization, with identities being geographically defined, may be the answer.
In the zero-sum conflict situations, federalism would expand into confederalism, paradoxically trying to reconcile unity with separation. Where even this degree of accommodation is not workable, and where territorial configurations permit, partition ought to be accepted.
How are these options to be brought about? Deciding which option to adopt is, of course, in the first place part of the sovereign right of the people of the country. But regional and international actors also have a responsibility that cannot be abdicated in the name of national sovereignty. By its very nature, sovereignty implies a tension between the demand for internal solutions and the need for corrective remedies from the outside.
In other words, the responsibilities of sovereignty require both internal and external accountability, which are inherently at odds, especially since the need for external involvement is commensurate with the failure of internal systems. Given the ambivalence of the international system about intervention, this responsibility should belong first to the subregional and regional actors, with the international community, through the United Nations, as the ultimate resort.
The interconnectedness of the conflicts of neighboring countries means that preventing, managing, or resolving conflicts is becoming recognized as a matter of interest and concern not only to the countries directly involved, but also to the region as a whole. Regional awakening to the common threat of internal conflict is still nascent, but the importance of the shared threat is being increasingly realized, especially in view of the tendency toward isolationism in Europe and the United States, the only powers still capable of effectively intervening for humanitarian reasons or for the cause of peace, security, and stability in other parts of the world.
Final accountability for the responsibilities of sovereignty must ultimately fall on the international community, more specifically the United Nations. The intervention of international financial institutions in the affairs of sovereign countries to ensure more efficient management of their economies has now become a truism.
International concern with issues of governance, such as democracy and respect for fundamental human rights, has also become widely accepted, despite the lingering resistance of vulnerable regimes. The most important thing to know — and we know you know this, but it must be said —is that Africa is not a country. According to studies that screen DNA markers in different populations, the African continent has the highest level of genetic diversity in the world.
Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. Photo by Lina Loos on Unsplash.
0コメント