Trails of Incomplete Decolonisation in Africa: The Land Question and Economic Structural Transformation

Abstract

Debates on decolonisation have featured prominently, particularly in South Africa, starting from 2014. Although the concept of decolonisation encompasses a wide range of ideas, there is a general sense that decolonisation is intended to draw attention to the fact that the dominant modes of thinking and production of knowledge across Africa are defined and dominated by a Western world view. In this debate, it is often argued that this represents the failure to fully decolonise the continent, even if colonial occupation ended 60 years ago in most countries. In this article, I argue that decolonisation project in Africa has remained incomplete and there are different manifestations of this. Two examples from the land and the economy are used to illustrate the unfinished project of the decolonising Africa. By arguing that decolonisation has remained incomplete, the paper is not arguing that there has been no attempt to decolonise; but that these efforts have not been radical enough to see the project to its logical conclusion. This is partly because the project of decolonisation was narrowly framed within the nationalist project, which tended to equate decolonisation with political liberation.