Review: Lahra Smith (2013): Making Citizens in Africa. Ethnicity, Gender, and National Identity in Ethiopia. (original) (raw)

Practices of Citizenship in East Africa

2019

This vital collection offers fresh insight into the nature of citizen engagement. Challenging liberal and universalist framings of democratic participation, the authors focus on people's everyday habits, practices and experiences of cooperation for livelihoods and survival. Citizenship is repositioned as a gradual, learned and contextual process that spans public and private life. This highly empirical and theoretically innovative work by African and European scholars is essential reading."

Pan-Africanism and African Citizenship: The Way Forward

Tamaddun

This paper critically analyses Pan-Africanism as an ideology for the liberation of Africa, with a view to assessing the possibilities of a common African citizenship. This paper argues the claim that the focus of Pan-Africanism should shift from activism, agitations, and struggles to a univocal platform that will define authentic African identities by crystallising a common nationality for Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora. This claim is known to be rooted in the age-long African values of brotherhood, complementarity, and family hood (Ujamaa) that make Africans see other Africans as brothers who share the same humanity. This is different from the Africans of today who have assimilated western values of individualism, which are divisive and exclusive in nature, which in reality is a negation of authentic African personhood and society. This has given rise to ethnic agitations, xenophobic attacks, populism and hatred against "outsiders". Therefore, it is i...

Citizenship and Human Rights in the Ethiopian Federal Republic

Ethiopian Constitutional and Public Law Series , 2019

This article explores and examines the citizenship and human rights architecture under the Ethiopian Constitution. As Ethiopia is imagined as a community of Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (NNPs), membership to NNPs is an essential component of being Ethiopian. Further, as Ethiopia is primarily constituted to advance and safeguard the interests and rights of NNPs, the enforcement of individual human rights is contingent upon their service to NNPs. The citizenship and human rights architecture engineered by the Ethiopian Constitution makes ethnicity the main site of citizenship. As a result, ethnicity has become the primary means and ultimate end of political organization and contestation in contemporary Ethiopia. For this constitutional design to work, this article suggests, the constitutional and political actors either have to find a narrative that goes beyond the normative universe of the Constitution or rethink the foundations and assumptions of the citizenship and human rights architecture.

Citizenship Matters: Explorations into the Citizen-State Relationship in Africa

Forum for Development Studies

Citizenship is a universal legal concept and norm. But its meaning and impact differ. Its codification and implementation are shaped by historical trajectories, political systems and state/government relations with members of society. State policy affects perceptions of citizenship and civic behaviour by those governed. This paper engages with current challenges relating to citizenship in Africa South of the Sahara. It centres on academic and policy discussions on citizenship but also draws on media reports and secondary literature to explore whether promoting and embracing a positive notion of citizenship can be an opportunity for states and governments as well as citizens. Could civic education be considered a worthwhile investment in social stability and a shared identification with the common good? We conclude by making a case for a social contract, which reconciles particularistic identities (such as ethnicity) with citizenship and governance under the rule of law as an investment into enhanced trust in a citizen-state relationship.

The politics of citizenship : social contract and inclusivity in Africa

Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2020

In many African countries, citizenship offers civil rights to those who are included. At the same time, many – especially youth, migrants and other marginalised groups – often do not receive equal recognition in the social contract between state and citizen. They do not have the same access to justice, social protection and welfare services. This policy note addresses the challenges facing inclusive citizenship