DO THE STATE OF AFRICA REALLY EXIST GIVING THE DEFINING FEATURES OF STATEHOOD.

WHAT IS A STATE?

        A state is a politically organized people
under a single government occupying a    definite geographical territory free from external control and having a government for the security and welfare of the people. A States is one of the most important constituent of the structure of global power.  States exercise claims to sovereign jurisdictions (it acts as the final arbiter of actions carried out within the territory) over a particular territory and population,Northedge’s defined a state as “a territorial association of people recognized for the purpose of law and diplomacy as a legally equal member of the system of states. States came into existence as people "gradually transferred their allegiance from an individual sovereign (king, duke, prince) to an intangible but territorial political entity, of the state". States are but one of several political orders that emerged from feudal Europe.

  The state of Africa.

    

   Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicit, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa. Most modern states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, it was during the period of colonial rule that modern Africa took on many of its most familiar characteristics. The imposition of alien rule, the colonial experience and the African reaction to these were by no means uniform, (Whatever the various reasons for, and the myriad local responses to the ‘Scramble for Africa’, one consequence was common: in Lonsdale’s elegant formulation, “... most Africans did not actually live in states until colonial rule fastened Leviathan’s yoke upon them. Indeed the most distinctively African contribution to human history could be said to have been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states.”).                                 

          But, throughout Africa, the impact of these events was revolutionary, whether measured in political, economic or social terms. The state of Africa includes both fully recognized states, states with limited recognition, and dependent territories of both African and non-African states. It lists 54 sovereign states and 10 non-sovereign territories. The 54 fully recognized states are all members of the United Nations, and as of 2015, all except Morocco and the Central African Republic are members of the African Union.

        In the brief historical space of eighty years at most -the period of effective colonial rule – the countless societies and cultures of Africa were incorporated into fifty or so states, with all that this radical transformation of political size, scale and doctrine implied. Traditional political and social structures, incorporating a moral universe often based on the assumption of the existence of kin and blood relationships with other members of the immediate community and its polity, were either overlaid or replaced by a new abstract colonial state whose extensive rights were founded on an impersonal doctrine of sovereignty quite alien to most African cultures. At the same time, they were drawn more closely into the global economy, and exposed to new technologies and ideas as never before.

                        

Features of a state.

    The internationally accepted feature that defines a state includes:

1. 

    Territory.

2.  Population.

3.  Sovereignty.

4.  Government.

  While others list other characteristics which may define a state like:

·  

•       Food supply.
•    Written records.
•       Commerce.

Territory: 

    The word territory means the geographical area under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state. The right of a state to control all of the territory which it has occupied or its right to govern the area allocated to it by international agreement or by revolutionary aspirations to liberation. States have established territorial boundaries; the size of the territory may change due to the acquisition of land or secession of land through political negotiations, purchase agreement, or by being overtaken by force such as during a war.

 Africa has been able to bring 54 of her country together under a union known as the African union The African Union (AU) is a 54-member federation consisting of all of Africa's states except Morocco. The union was formed, with Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as its headquarters, on 26 June 2001. The union was officially established on 9 July 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), one of the aims of this union is to maintain Africa’s integration as well as offer hope for greater co-operation and peace between the continent's many countries. There are clear signs of increased networking among African organizations and states. For example, in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire), Liberian war, rather than rich, non-African countries intervening, neighbouring African countries became involved.

 Sovereignty:  A sovereign state is a nonphysical juridical entity that is represented by one centralized government that has sovereignty over a geographic area. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, one government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign state as no state is an island. It is also normally understood that a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state.  Sovereignty is the concept of nation-state sovereignty based on territoriality and the absence of a role for external agents in domestic structures. In political science, sovereignty is usually defined as the most essential attribute of the state in the form of its complete self-sufficiency in the frames of a certain territory that is its supremacy in the domestic policy and independence in the foreign one. It is an international system of states, multinational corporations, and organizations that began with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.


Though a state may be able to control its territory and even achieve loyalty from its population its needs this recognition in order to participate in international transactions (a sovereign state can exist without being recognised by other sovereign states, unrecognised states will often find it hard to exercise full treaty-making powers and engage in diplomatic relations with other sovereign states.) which contributes largely to statehood. In order to achieve sovereignty the state requires an international structure which in turn is expected to serve a number of functions. It has to identify a person or group of people who are deemed to represent the state and carry the authority of the state as a whole. They need to control subordinates and charge them with essential functions, the most of which is the physical control of the national territory. Africa has been able to make its decisions without interference from other states, for example in Nigeria the proposition of the adoption of gay rights as well as lesbian’s right to be legal was rejected by Nigerian.

Government:

    Government can be said to be a group of people having the legitimate right to act on behalf of those who are merely subjects or citizens as they are chosen through some constitutional mechanism. Government is seen as the mercenary through which sovereign power of people in a country is expressed and used to cater for its collective interest. They act as the physical control in the state; the government is charged with responsibility of providing protection and looking out for the welfare of the people who they govern, it makes law and maintain peace and protects life and property, it also establish the armed forces for the defense of the country, its provide a justiciable framework for the economy to thrive, it provides infrastructural and social services that help generate employment and improve citizens standard of living, it establishes and maintain friendly relationship among state in the international arena, the government which they form also needs to extract money and resources required to run a state, some of which is designed to improve the welfare of the state population, through education, health care, and other services, A state is permanent while the government changes, as government is charged with ensuring the welfare of its inhabitant, through maintaining peace and order and Africa has strived to ensure that its citizens who are its focal point remain protected, Africa has one of the world’s best foot soldiers.

Population: population can be defined as a group of people or a large majority of it who voluntary agree to live within a state with language, religion, shared or unshared experiences, similar or different historical mythologies, but are bound through a sense of nationhood which binds members of the population to one another and the state in which they all belong. A state cannot exist without people regardless of the number of the particular population.

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.2 million km2 (11.7 million sq. mi) including adjacent islands, it covers six per cent of Earth's total surface area and 20.4 per cent of its total land area. With 1.1 billion people as of 2013, it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population with 1250-3000 native languages.

Conclusion.

   The question of whether the continent Africa actually qualifies for being called a state appeared to have been settled by colonial partition and independence but the question is fast arising as states have been disappearing from the continent and by the emergence of authorities whose entitlement to state hood can be contested.  Although African state have sometimes sought to maintain social transformation they are still among the weakest states in  the global system, at times they have been unable to maintain control over the very own territory which they claim to govern, but research shows that the state of Africa possesses the distinctive features of a state.

Though Africa has been grouped under third world country it has the strong characteristics of a state as its inhabitants has long since accepted it to be their centerpiece.

REFERENCE.

1.  

1.     Anup Shah
2.     Le Monde diplomatique article by  Mwayila Tshiyembe
3.  
4. 3.  Hélène Gandois: Sovereignty as Responsibility: Theory and Practice in Africa;
5.  
6. 4.  Appadorai, A. (1968). The Substance of Politics (11th Ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
7.  
8. 5.  Price, J. H. (1967). Political Institutions in West Africa. London: Hutchinson.
9.  
10. 6.  Richard Cornwell Chapter 4: The collapse of the African state
11.  
12. 7.  Sam mbah igariwey: African anarchism the history of a movement.
13.  
14. 8.  Nigerian Open University; political science- African international relations
15.  
16. 9.  Africa and the international system; the politics of state survival by Christopher Clapham university of Lancaster.
17.  
18. 10.         www.enotes.com
19.  
20. 11.         Advance English dictionary.
21.  
22. 12.         The Nigeria constitutional law by eze malemi.
23.  
24. 13.          Wikipedia

TABLE OF CONTENT.

·   WHAT IS A STATE

·   THE STATE OF AFRICA

·   FEATURES OF A STATE

·   TERRITORY

·   SOVEREIGNITY

·   GOVERNMENT

·   POPULATION

·   CONCLUSION

·   REFERENCE

BABCOCK UNIVERSITY

ILISHAN-REMO

OGUN STATE.

COURSE: AFRICA INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.

DEPARTMENT: INTERNATIONAL LAW AND DIPLOMACY.

ASSIGNMENT: DO THE STATE OF AFRICA REALLY EXIST GIVING THE DEFINING FEATURES OF STATEHOOD.

COURSE CODE: ILDP 202.

                                         

                        NAME OF LECTURER: MR CHINEDU ETI.