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From Strangers to Minorities in West Africa

I am somewhat daunted by the honour of opening this conference; for what I have to offer is not the product of intensive scholarship but a broad and possibly contentious argument about the whole sub-continent of West Africa (roughly bounded by the Senegal river, Lake Chad and Mount Cameroon). My underlying hypotheses will be that many so-called minority problems in contemporary Africa derive from changes introduced by the creation of colonial states, rather than from some exotic African malady called ‘tribalism’ and that African experience over the last millennium may sometimes be more relevant to contemporary problems than the received wisdom of western political science. I have some fear that, to adapt a phrase of Sir Keith Hancock, these may prove no themes for scholars.