Centralism Of State Power in Africa: Power Against the People
GONDEU Ladiba ,VAIDJIKE Dieudonné
Keywords:
Africa, identity challenges, reference crises, state centralism, State. ,
Abstract
This text aims to examine the process of institutionalization of the State in Africa in its unitary and centralized form. It is based on the observation that the highly centralized State has failed and is facing multiform crises, economic, political, socio-cultural and security. Not only has it contributed to the disarticulation of African societies, but it has also failed to provide lasting benchmarks for the entities it is supposed to govern. Several expressions exist to characterize the state in Africa : «Failed States» or failing states, «Soft States» or soft states or rhizomes. The latter term is also developed as “collapsed states”. The main question of this reflection is whether the State in its unitary and centralized form is not against the people, if the crises that pass through it are not expressed more in its articulation with the internal dynamics of the territories considered as peripheral. The aim is to examine the incongruities attached to the unitary and centralised form of the state in Africa, using analyses from the grey literature on the state-genesis in Africa.