A Re-Examination of the Conception of Ethnicity in Africa as an Ideology of Inter-Elite Competition

Abstract

The African elite has the advantage in the competition for top government positions and other scarce socio-political and economic resources. The patron-client system which the elite controls, in most cases using the state apparati, provides the major basis for arguing that ethnicity is an ideology of inter-elite competition. While agreeing that the elite is fragmented enough to be masters of the ethnic strategy in a situation where the rest of the society is largely illiterate, this paper argues that the conception of ethnicity as an "ideology" of inter-elite competition is too limited and inadequate. First, ethnicity is not just an ideology; it is a reality of every multiethnic society, and this reality manifests both in cultural and non-cultural ways. Second, ethnicity, as an effective strategy and major manipulative tool in the competition for societal resources, is not an exclusive preserve of the elite. It is also available to the non-elite who are empirically adept at what I call an elite-challenging ethnicity.