This paper advances a pre-colonial institutional thesis to explain the variation in the salience of ethnicity in African societies. It posits that pre-colonial political centralization facilitated the accumulation of economic and institutional advantages, positioning descendants of centralized ethnic groups to benefit from these advantages within postcolonial states. Social identity choices are rational; therefore, descendants of centralized ethnic groups, who enjoy greater advantages within the nation, find less incentive to choose their ethnicity over their national identity. Examples from Ethiopia and Ghana as well as the evidence from combining individual-level survey data from the Afrobarometer with historical data on pre-colonial political centralization support the theoretical claim. In particular, the paper presents both theory and evidence indicating that individuals with ancestors from politically centralized pre-colonial societies are less likely to favour their ethnic identity over their national identity . These findings underscore the importance of considering pre-colonial legacies when promoting national unity.

This article is driven by an empirical paradox over where Somalia came from (pre-colonial clan-states) and where it ended up (return to pre-colonial clano-territorial conflicts). Existing academic studies on contemporary Somalia, which were supposed to provide critical analysis, continue to applaud the creation of clan-states within the failed state of Somalia. Based on a variety of unique primary sources, this article offers a new perspective on the current state formation processes occurring in the purview of the Somali State. Somali clans are determined to come to terms with the state collapse by averting the return to political power of the detested military regime, which was led by one clan-based leadership that tended to terrorize other rival clans and denied any equal power- and resource-sharing framework. Conceptualizing the contemporary Somali state as similar to pre-colonial clan-sultanates, this article argues that contemporary Somalis are reverting to a pre-colonial realm where each clan had its clan sultan seeking for a clan-state of its own right. Where else do clan-states compete against each other in entering into “treaties” with external entities intent on exploiting war-torn Somalia as tabula rasa? It is towards the objective of answering this question and of providing a better understanding of the Somali conflict that this article is offered to add a comparative empirical understanding of the different trajectories of state formations in Somalia.

Multiple, overlapping, and competing forms of authority contributed to the highly centralized Buganda kingdom. Their enduring salience, commonly considered characteristic of heterarchy, challenges our understanding of the early history of the kingdom. A map that specifies the location of 292 chiefs and authority figures in the capital reveals not only the critical importance of multiple forms of authority but also the development of those forms over several centuries. The allocation of space in the capital and other historical sources indicate that compromise and co-optation characterized the practice of power in the ancient kingdom: the king was surrounded, literally and figuratively, by others who curbed his authority.

This article suggests that differences in local political structures and credit protection regimes largely account for Bonny's displacement of Old Calabar as the principal slave port of the Bight of Biafra in the eighteenth century, despite Bonny's reputation for being particularly unhealthy for Europeans. We argue that this displacement occurred in the 1730s, several decades earlier than previously thought. We suggest that this was made possible by the early growth and consolidation of royal authority at Bonny. The use of state authority to enforce credit arrangements in Bonny proved more effective than the mechanisms adopted at its closest rival, Old Calabar, where, in the absence of a centralized political authority similar to the monarchy at Bonny, credit protection before 1807 was based on pawnship.

As the exception on the continent, southern Africa has no Neolithic period. In the 1920s, when the term came to mean Stone Age with food production, Neolithic was dropped in South Africa for lack of evidence for farming or herding in Stone Age sites. But since the late 1960s many sheep bones have surfaced in just such sites. Now, the continued absence of a Neolithic may say more about the politics of South African archaeology than about its prehistory. This paper describes food production in the southern African late Stone Age and argues in favor of (re-)introducing the term Neolithic to the subcontinent.

Exploring a range of studies regarding the ‘invention of tradition’, the ‘making of customary law’ and the ‘creation of tribalism’ since the 1980s, this survey article argues that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony. Rather, tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present. Colonial power was limited by chiefs' obligation to ensure community well-being to maintain the legitimacy on which colonial authorities depended. And ethnicity reflected longstanding local political, cultural and historical conditions in the changing contexts of colonial rule. None of these institutions were easily fabricated or manipulated, and colonial dependence on them often limited colonial power as much as facilitating it.