Alienation and the Problem of Loyalty in Africa

Abstract

The problem of loyalty is important for understanding the crisis of the nation-state in postcolonial Africa. This paper examines the reason why people are attached to their ethnic units rather than the nation-state. In the first part it analyzes loyalty and the weakness of the state in attracting it. The second part it uses Rawls’ theory of overlapping consensus to show how certain principles can be agreed upon which would form the basis of social morality.