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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• social contract
• governance
• state
• civil society

The legal concept of citizenship, anchored in the laws governing a state and its organisation, grew out of the French Revolution (Brubaker, 1989). The status of citizen (citoyen) allocates individuals an affiliation to societies, organised as ‘imagined communities’ in (self-)declared nation states.¹ It turns such an affiliation into a negotiated or contested matter as a legal status associated with a national entity, often underlined by the interchangeable use of ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’. With this belonging comes rights and entitlements, including benefits, as well as obligations and (predominantly moral rather than legal) duties.

Citizenship plays an increasingly central role in governance at a time when globalisation and the mobility of people have shifted the context of belonging.² This is also reflected in a shift in citizenship studies since the turn of the century.³ That said, ‘blind spots’ remain around the notion and role of citizenship within processes of social transformation. A recent handbook on democracy and development, for example (Crawford and Abdulai, 2021), only indexes the word ‘citizenship’ three times across more than 500 pages.⁴ Discussions on citizenship and belonging have, however, been at the forefront of African postcolonial debates on the character of the state (Mamdani, 1996; Ng’weno and Aloo, 2019).

Citizenship as a form of legal inclusion or exclusion of belonging by states remains a powerful tool in asymmetric global power relations, often in justification of the infringement on rights and liberties. While we sympathise with critical assessments of citizenship as a form of continued coloniality (Boatca, 2019; 2021), we consider our observations and arguments as a pragmatic way forward. They are motivated by the absence of any realistic alternatives in the current organisation and structures of international relations, which remain based on the (‘nation’) state principle, as elusive – or rather illusive and fictious – as this might have become in the face of demographic realities in many countries. The factual relevance of citizenship as a determining status for individuals remains intact. Hence, albeit it might smack of ‘realpolitik’, we explore how a notion of citizenship and citizenship education could contribute to building awareness of shared belonging within a society as one of the ingredients to promote cohesion, loyalty and solidarity in the wider interest of stability based on rights and entitlements in as much as duties.

While in search of improvements in the positions of members of society often denied citizenship rights (not to mention entitlements), we share – to a certain extent – the ambivalence and ambiguity, for which Shachar (2009) had been criticised (see Bosniak et al., 2011). Namely, on the one hand, to challenge citizenship as a specific, discriminating form of institutionalisation of privileges, while on the other hand seeking for modes of preserving it as an institution. We pursue a similar line of argument, based on what Lee (2020, p. 5) summarised with reference to Cooper (2018, p. 150): ‘citizenship still remains a “useful fiction” for addressing and mobilizing against enduring forms of discrimination and social injustice’. Along similar lines, Mamdani (2020, p. 335) bemoans that the ‘literature on citizenship tends to ignore the role of the nation-state in provoking controversies surrounding citizenship’ when demanding to imagine ‘political community beyond the nation-state’. He argues in favour of ‘dreaming up a political community that undoes the organic link between state and nation that has gelled over the past five centuries’, but at the same time insists: ‘The right of citizenship is the mother of all rights’ (Mamdani, 2020, p. 334).

The focus of this paper is spurred by the authors’ engagement with African and European policy makers who grapple with how to understand the different aspects of the citizen-state relationship in a changing continent.⁵ To make our case, we present a pragmatically guided overview of the literature on citizenship in African countries.⁶ It then assesses the implications of the postcolonial trajectory for the current role of citizenship in African systems of governance. On this background, new dimensions and developments affecting the role of citizenship and its relevance in African societies are discussed with reference to some of the aspects we consider as relevant: shifts in demographic factors, communication technology, socio-economic strata and forms of political contestation. Is a practical engagement with notions of citizenship, worth the while for scholars and policy makers of Africa? We argue that it is. Concluding our paper in favour of efforts that strengthen the notion of citizenship as an embracing concept of governance based on a social contract of belonging. However, we are cognisant that protracted austerity policies in Africa’s countries have made it difficult for states to meet their obligations to citizens, through the delivery of public goods and services. We thus make a case for a departure from laissez-faire state model that had been since the 1980s actively promoted in Africa’s countries by the IMF/Worldbank (Schatz, 1987). To do so requires Africa’s countries to not only reframe their relationships with their citizens but also their place within an unequal global economic order.

Towards a more pragmatic approach to state and citizenship

Policy makers and academics engaging with postcolonial African contexts have been grappling with how to frame the citizen-state relations in a multifaceted context covering issues of belonging, economy and politics amidst great social transformation. Connecting these themes enables an examination of the legacy of the exclusionary colonial politics in Africa’s countries, whose hierarchies of citizenship and belonging are encoded in contemporary governance structures. This exclusionary legacy has created narrow definitions of citizenship that pit ‘insiders’ against supposed ‘outsiders’ (Nyamnjoh, 2006). The protracted austerity policies implemented in the IMF/World Bank-backed restructuring of African economies further narrowed the space for state-citizen affiliation through the retreat of the state in the provision of services and welfare. This ideological and structural retreat of the postcolonial state spurred an attendant rise in societal polarisation (Adekanye, 1995) that found expression in ethno-populism and xenophobia. Several scholars (Manqoyi, 2019; Nyamnjoh, 2006) have made the case for a more inclusive view of citizenship to counter the narrow formulations of citizenship that disregard the effects of African mobility on overlapping experiences of belonging, including the notion of conviviality (Lategan, 2021; Nyamnjoh, 2007; 2015; 2022). More recently, given the uneven impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Global South, scholars have called for a reimagination of what it means to be a citizen from a global perspective (Moyo and Dube, 2021). They examine citizenship through a decolonial lens, emphasising the need to address issues of imperialism that underlie unequal hierarchies of belonging (Moyo and Dube, 2021; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020; Nyamnjoh, 2019; Nyamnjoh and Lester, 2019). Put differently: ‘Being a citizen is a permanent work in progress’ (Nyamnjoh, 2018, p. 66).

Before we explore the literature on citizenship in more detail, this section summarises why a pragmatic approach to citizenship is necessary and what it might entail. As already suggested, citizenship is to a large extent a discriminatory tool (through exclusion) in as much as it is an instrument to protect (through inclusion). Given that the logical consequence to replace state citizenship with global or world citizenship – advocated since long, and increasingly so in the context of higher education⁷ – remains wishful thinking in the short term, we pursue a pragmatic approach here. State institutions represent citizens at home and abroad. Formal belonging to a state is also a matter of security, as it ensures a legal status offering a certain degree of protection. This forms the basis of identification, but also surveillance. Citizenship has socio-economic and political relevance. It has become a commodity for purchase, while residency for migrants provides a legal non-citizen status. These processes make ‘sedentarism’ (living in the country of birth) less relevant.⁸ But the global asymmetric relations are also reflected in different forms of citizenship: to gain access to international mobility, identity documents from the country of origin (i.e. citizenship status and passport) are a necessary formal prerequisite and the home country’s global status provides at times only limited free movement internationally.

There has been a growing trade in Citizenship and Residence by Investment (CRBI). More than half of all countries offer CRBI deals, which allow the purchase of passports.⁹ The legal identity of individuals, in other words, is anything but obsolete, although it is not taken for granted in many African countries.

The African Union has adopted policies for its diaspora, aimed at encouraging their engagement in the continent’s development (Adisa, 2017). Several African countries, most notably Ghana (Schramm, 2020) but also Liberia (Pailey, 2021), have adopted policies that allow for the possibility of dual citizenship. Despite these trends, bureaucratic limitations hinder the possibility of access to full citizenship rights. For example, participation in elections for non-resident citizens is sometimes constrained by inadequate systems to vote outside the country, as demonstrated in the 2010 Kenyan elections, when only a minority of those living outside the country were enabled to participate (Wellman and Whitaker, 2021).

As these preliminary reflections on how citizenship has been deployed in partial or outright exclusionary ways suggest, the concept – and, more importantly, the governance structures and effects it represents – continues to raise serious problems and challenges in African countries and elsewhere. So why devote an article to an argument for its relevance in shaping state-citizen relations in the future? There are numerous arguments in favour of a positive and inclusive approach to citizenship. For one, a more inclusive approach to citizenship would safeguard the rights of those who have been displaced by conflict. Despite African countries hosting more than a quarter of the global refugee population, Bronwen Manby (2021, p. 518) notes that none of them have naturalisation policies that facilitate their path to citizenship, which would also allow for full participation in socio-economic life. A second argument is that it would foster regional integration and be a step towards consolidating the post-independence aspiration of a Pan-African identity. To this end, the African Union has introduced a continental passport, ostensibly to foster free movement across the continent, an aspiration that Michael Asideu (2017, p. 1) considers ‘farfetched’ given the restrictive national policies on migration that exist on the continent. Even if it were realised, its access would require the backing of a state. Thus, for the African Union and the continent’s regional economic blocs, there is a need for flexible and inclusive state-level mechanisms tied to citizenship, to achieve the goal of increased trade and mobility. A third case for citizenship is that it would not only ensure the benefits of skills and investment to the host countries; it would also provide access to state services such as health and education for excluded groups. However, these positive notions of citizenship would need to be backed by a state apparatus that centres its obligations on the welfare of citizens rather than its current emphasis on the facilitation of capitalist investment. In southern Africa, considered one of the most unequal regions in the world,¹⁰ this inclination has been galvanised by protests for service delivery, which are, in effect, a call on the state to prioritise its obligations towards its citizens. This highlights the need to not only reduce citizenship to a legal status awarded by the state in a top-down manner but also to strengthen the social contract between citizens and the state.

There is, however, a long road from the birth of citizenship during the French revolution to current notions and practices of citizenship, not least in (post-)colonial African societies.¹¹ This has been anything but a unilinear trajectory, which we seek to summarise in the following section for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Particularities of citizenship in African states

The contemporary nation state in Africa emerged as a result of colonial expropriation, spearheaded in part by corporate entities such as the British South Africa Company that sought the partnership of imperial powers such as Britain to legitimate their extraction of resources and labour. This was a pattern replicated across Africa in territories appropriated by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, reflecting economic interest, but also competition within Europe for global spheres of control (Chamberlain, 1999). Citizenship in most African countries South of the Sahara thus evolved as the product of a colonial administration and an extractive economic rationale. It created a ‘citizen and subject’ divide wherein racialised identity classified the white minority into citizens, while ethnic identity turned the black majority into subjects (Mamdani, 1996). It also created the framing for an unequal extractive global economic architecture that Africa’s countries have been trying to extricate themselves from (Martin, 1972). Such divisions contributed to distinctive forms of citizenship, influenced by colonial trajectories.¹² These dividing lines also contributed to the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1985), through which colonised communities re-appropriated the narratives of their ethnic or autochthonous belonging (see also Geschiere, 2009). Colonial policy and administration thereby reinforced, and in some cases constructed deep-seated particularistic identities based on local cultural traditions and languages.¹³ It also spatialised racial and class inequalities. These historical developments illustrate how the state, through an array of provisions, can (ab)use its power of definition by creating barriers to citizenship. This turns citizenship into a contested issue of social engineering as discrimination rather than birth-right through states who selectively award citizenship as a privilege to some members of a society while excluding others. Rights and recognition remain areas of conflict (Englund and Nyamnjoh, 2004). Individuals therefore finally transform only from subjects into citizens when their agency is acknowledged and recognised (Hoffman, 2004).

The sovereign African states maintained the boundaries drawn by colonial powers. These boundaries often separated ethnic communities and limited their interaction with border controls. Such divisions triggered demands for more autonomy and even culminated in secessionist movements (cf. de Vries et al., 2018). This is a reminder that ‘citizenship is not just a legal concept but also a profoundly political question of self-definition’ (Manby, 2018a, p. 311). It is a relevant status within a given state, aspired to by many but also rejected by some. It often remains in latent collision with underlying identities created or entrenched during colonial rule.

This confirms a variety of dimensions of citizenship in Africa (and elsewhere) when ethnic identity and state authority contribute to a bifurcation of rights and obligations (Halisi et al., 1998). The challenge diagnosed in the conclusion of a review article at the turn of the century is, therefore, that ‘the gulf between the political realm and the rest of society is so large that the concept of citizenship remains a slogan’. This requires a ‘move towards a politics of inclusion, accommodation, solidarity and re-grouping’ (von Lieres, 1999, p. 148).

Dissociation of individuals from the society in which they live occurs also through forced exclusion. The withholding or withdrawing of citizenship as a form of disenfranchisement is a means to prevent participation in politics: ‘incumbent political elites have been acting like their colonial counterparts and have used citizenship laws to get rid of critical and opposing voices by depriving these people of their nationality’ (Mbaku, 2017, p. 7).

Prominent examples are Zambia’s first President Kenneth Kaunda (in office from 1964 to 1991), who was stripped by a High Court from his citizenship to prevent him from a return to politics.¹⁴ In Botswana, the withdrawal of citizenship to John Modise as an opposition politician kept the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights busy between 1993 and 2000, until finally ruling that the government has to reinstate the claimant as a citizen by descent.¹⁵ In Côte d’Ivoire, the annulment of incumbent president Alassane Ouattara’s nationality certificate in 1999 marked the escalation towards civil war, although his citizenship was reinstated in 2002.¹⁶ These prominent cases testify to the state’s (often meaning the government’s) insistence on the sole and even arbitrary authority to define belonging (Nugent et al., 2007). This makes individuals – who in contrast to the three prominent cases lack the means to challenge such decisions in court – vulnerable to political, economic and social losses (Halisi et al., 1998).

As a case in point in this regard, thousands of Ethiopians were disqualified from citizenship, alleged to have been of Eritrean origin and therefore declared a security risk (Manby, 2018b, p. 194). With reference to their case, Riggan (2016, p. 163) observed ‘the slipperiness of citizenship categories’, showing how ‘categories of belonging can be manipulated for political ends, and reveal that the capacity to manipulate citizenship categories is, in fact, one of the spoils that comes with capture of the state’. Ethiopia also testifies to the problems of a federal state in which ethnicity is as strong a factor as citizenship¹⁷ where ethno-nationalism is rooted in fertile grounds (Smith, 2013).¹⁸

Similar divides contribute to domestic tensions in several African countries, exacerbated by religion and language (such as in Nigeria and Cameroon). Hundreds of thousands born in Zimbabwe are denied citizenship because their (grand-)parents were from Nyasaland (present-day Malawi). Since most of them were directly or indirectly dependent upon employment as farm workers in the commercial agricultural sector at the turn of the century, still controlled mainly by white farmers (and therefore suspected of being loyal to these), the government prevented them as ‘non-citizens’ from being entitled to voting rights. Such denial of access to rights and civil freedoms becomes ‘a powerful and dangerous weapon to indiscriminately “other” second-, third- and fourth-generation migrant descendants’ (Daimon, 2014, p. 148).¹⁹

Such challenges are perhaps even more acutely felt by those fleeing violence, persecution, or natural disasters across international borders. Africa is host to more than 20 per cent of the world’s refugee population, the majority of them youthful, with 59 per cent under the age of 18 (UNHCR, 2019). An ongoing challenge for young refugees and internally displaced persons is the difficulty in obtaining nationally recognised identification such as birth certificates that would allow them to access education, services and even citizenship, given that a majority of African countries offer citizenship to those born in the country. However, this path to citizenship is not free from obstacles: although an increasing number of African countries offer dual citizenship (Atabong, 2020), participation in active civil and political life tends to privilege imagined autochthons (Manby, 2009). The non-provision of citizenship excludes those born or seeking refuge in a country also from social grants when such identification is required for access.

As shown in this section, citizenship in African societies was a concept of formal and legal belonging created elsewhere and imposed by a colonial state. While mainly established for the colonisers, its concept and definition embraced also the colonised, though in the main not included in the benefits of being citizens with full civil rights. But in terms of identity, entitlements and related privileges, citizenship was a prerequisite to access certain liberties. While inherited from an outside agency, this concept has not been significantly modified or adjusted. The use (and abuse) of citizenship is in African states not much different from discriminatory practices elsewhere. Colonial legacies include citizenship as an instrument over which the power of definition rests often ultimately with those in government. The rule of law then seems to become a variable, which tends to be turned into the law of the rulers, as the cases of exclusion of competitors or voters based on arbitrary interpretation of citizenship in elections demonstrate. This lacks not only coherence but also cohesion and demotes citizenship rights to an attribute of rule by the power of definition. The state-citizenship relation should however play an integrative role to enhance loyalty and identification. We therefore now have a closer look into some of the aspects, which affect such relations.

The state and citizenship revisited

The widespread implementation of structural adjustment policies across Africa since the late 1980s saw the retreat of the state in the provision of welfare and services. Although several scholars observe that, with the advent of neoliberalism, the prerogatives of the state were reshaped and redeployed rather than simply curtailed (see Hibou, 1998; Mbembe, 2001), for many youths this process still delinked the material manifestation of the state’s obligations to its citizens. Since then, both the World Bank and the IMF have in a number of studies as well as in their lending strategies advocated and supported social transfer programmes as safety nets (Garcia and Moore, 2012; Hickey and Seekings, 2017). Such social policy measures have been rapidly on the rise and exacerbated as emergency measures during the Covid-19 pandemic (Gronbach, 2020). As a side effect, they encourage formal registration of births, especially in rural areas. A major issue standing in the way of such registration is the underdeveloped administrative capacity (and perhaps political will). As a result, no African country has a complete birth registration system.²⁰

For pensions and other social grants and transfers, as institutionalised to an advanced extent in countries such as South Africa and Namibia, this further disempowers the marginalised – such as the San (‘Bushmen’) and other local communities in often remote rural areas. In times of coping strategies to ease the worst effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, this underlines the importance of comprehensive registries providing identification to claim benefits. It also points to a gender-specific dimension in as far as some countries (most notably Botswana and Namibia) have an exceptionally high proportion of female-headed households. Women often raise children without any support from fathers, who evade maintenance payments. This increases the dependence on state support, for which proper registration of all household members is a prerequisite. Additionally, the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic since the 1980s in sub-Saharan Africa has left a legacy of child-headed and grandmother-supported households that require significant state support for livelihoods.

Lately, contestations around citizenship have been on the increase. This is to some extent a result of further democratisation and popular struggles. A stronger civil society ‘emboldened previously suppressed counterhegemonic identity groups and movements to engage the state to demand inclusive citizenship’ (Osaghae, 2016, p. 272). Independent mass media as well as advocacy groups campaigning for civil, human, democratic, and minority rights have given impulse to recent contestations over citizenship rights. As we have shown in our recent respective work,²¹ demographic changes, migration, new communication technologies, a growing middle class, and new developments in resource extraction are all factors which impact on perceptions and convictions influencing current demands for governance reforms relating to citizenship. We explain and argue why in the following sub-sections.

Demographic changes and communication technologies

The continent’s projected population growth may see the African population double by 2050. Nearly 41 per cent of the population is below the age of 15, while the age group 15–24 years constitutes almost 20 per cent of the total population (UNECA, 2017). At the same time, the economy in many African countries has been described as one of ‘jobless growth’. Technological advances bypass those who do not have the required skills or access to the technology. A majority of youth live and ‘wait’ in precariousness – they are un- or underemployed, do not have access to higher education or vocational training and are often not represented in democratic fora, or lacking citizenship rights (Honwana, 2012). The African Development Bank anticipates that the ability to create ‘jobs for the future’ (AfDB, 2020) or the available opportunities for this ‘youth bulge’ will decide the fate of the continent. Younger generations are increasingly concentrated in major cities, in particular capitals. While their energy is driving the economy and innovation, many are facing limitations through inadequate housing and other infrastructural deficits. These trigger escalating demands for better services.

Rural areas, though, will remain important, as Africa’s youth straddles urban and rural livelihoods, where they engage in agriculture and other natural resource-based economic activities (Mueller and Thurlow, 2019). This has implications for rural youth, but in particular for rural women: their roles and participation in civic life remain largely invisible, and their interests are notoriously underrepresented (Ndlovu and Mutale, 2013).

A growing proportion of young citizens, in combination with the implementation and consolidation of multi-party democracy, gives young, often urban voters considerable influence over the ballot (Oinas et al., 2018). At the same time, formal political structures often continue to entrench power among the older generations and cultivate gerontocratic tendencies. This resonates with traditional local social hierarchies. These are, however, being challenged by emergent youth and feminist movements that are mobilising on issues of access to services, land, jobs and resources (Honwana, 2014).

Many states recently witnessed large-scale political protests, with youth activists in the lead. Street protests provided young people with a platform for political engagement. They have often centred on democratic principles rather than personalised or party politics. These include protesting the extended terms in office of incumbent presidents, or more broadly the political manipulation of the constitution to facilitate elite entrenchment (e.g. in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Guinea, Senegal, and the DRC). Such mobilisations illustrate that young citizens are aware of their rights, confronting governments with their demands. A recent open letter by a ‘born free’ addressing Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa over his failure to serve the people illustrates the point. He signed as ‘a citizen fighting for a better Zimbabwe’ (Caitano, 2020).

For a new generation, dubbed by Herrera (2012) with reference to the Egyptian spring as a ‘wired generation’ of ‘cyber citizens’, youth mobilisation combines long-standing means of communication and coordination – such as public rallies, associational structures and traditional media – with technological innovations such as the transformative role of the internet. Popular music is also a central tool in how the youth communicate dissent and mobilise protest in countries such as Zambia (Mususa, 2012), Senegal (Lanzano, 2012) and Uganda.²² Despite widespread internet access challenges, a citizenship issue in itself in the information age, African governments increasingly fear the internet and its potential to overturn power structures. During protests, state authorities have limited access through internet disturbances, so-called throttling, or by total shutdowns. In 2019, at least 10 African countries blocked or reduced access to digital media (Garbe, 2020). The introduction of social media taxes or interventions regulating a stricter control of internet-based communication show how governments seek to curb the influence of new communication technologies.²³

Shifts in social strata

A growing number of people have moved into (often lower and precarious) segments of the so-called middle classes (Melber, 2016). Their level of education, professional activities and lifestyle go hand in hand with greater awareness of the relevance of citizenship as a means to enhance individual protection and mobility. A major service promoting active citizenship is education. However, despite the expansion of higher education, enrolment remains low in global comparison. In addition, subsidies for public higher education are being phased out and increasing shares of students and their families pay full fees at private institutions (Hallberg Adu, 2020). This shift towards private education may imply that priorities to foster trust in government and to create civic skills become less relevant than in public educational institutions.²⁴

Educational advancement is also associated with entitlements as regards political engagements. Citizenship awareness motivates civil society activities seeking to improve governance. Demands often focus on more accountability and transparency by state authorities vis-à-vis citizens and emphasise the centrality of the social contract. This includes claims for a ‘citizenship rent’ in the form of a rights-based culture providing a number of benefits in return for individual contributions to the state and its governance (e.g. compliance with tax regulations and the legal system).

But self-awareness of a middle-class status not only advances democratic views. It can contribute to exclusivist elite perceptions. According to an Afrobarometer Survey, ‘middle-class persons display a pervasive suspicion that their fellow citizens are incapable of casting a responsible vote’. As ‘education rises, individuals are more likely to agree that “only those who are sufficiently well educated should be allowed to choose our leaders” and to disagree that “all people should be permitted to vote”’ (Bratton, 2013b, p. 281). The socio-economic advancements therefore can enhance an awareness of status-related citizenship rights. Upward social mobility, in other words, can feed sentiments that exclude others. Citizenship thereby reproduces class-based features and social differentiation promotes perceptions of different categories of citizenship.

The vicinity or distance to state agencies is another factor. Those benefitting from their closeness to authorities tend towards loyal behaviour, conformity and uncritical attitudes regarding existing citizenship. As interactions with governo papa (father government) in rural northern Mozambique shows (Kalina and Scott, 2018), such attitudes were likely among the older, better-off people with access to social services and the local leadership. While more empowered to engage critically, they are unlikely to risk the relative privileges secured through the vicinity of state agencies. In contrast, more critical perceptions of exclusivist tendencies in existing forms of citizenship are found among those further distant and disconnected from state-centred activities. They are in the main younger, poorer and often un- or underemployed. Notably, it is the youth in northern Mozambique that is prone to radicalisation, joining the military insurgency by Islamist terror groups in Cabo Delgado – not for religious reasons but as a sign of despair, frustration and alienation (du Plessis, 2020).

In as much as social strata become increasingly relevant also for the debate over citizenship, ethnicity remains a deeply entrenched factor shaping and guiding identities and clientelism. Social mobility alone is therefore not a sufficient criterion when it comes to individual and collective forms of articulation and claims. This becomes apparent when considering the factors influencing domestic competition for access to resources.

Benefits from natural resources

Official borders, formal notions of citizenship and the authority of the central state coexist with different forms of belonging, such as ethnicity, and with competing sources of power, such as and regional and traditional chieftainships. These forms of power and belonging are closely associated with the questions of access to – and rights over – natural resources. They not only affect the rights of use, inheritance or sale of specific groups over certain resources but are shaped in return by these groups’ livelihood practices and political claims, in a mutually constitutive relation (see Lund and Boone, 2013). More particularly, access to land has been historically embedded in a set of relationships and practices depending on identities and membership to lineages and ethnic groups, drawing on the local histories of human settlement and the socio-political dynamics between first-comers and late-comers (Lentz, 2006). Customary traditions and norms have survived in contradictory ways (Geschiere and Jackson, 2006) and have often been revived and reinterpreted in light of contemporary political strategies and stakes (Spear, 2003; Whitehead and Tsikata, 2003).

Land ownership and use remain essential for discussing citizenship in relation to property (Jacob and Le Meur, 2010; Lund, 2011; Moyo et al., 2015). In many cases, these issues connect to inter-generational tensions and claims when demographic pressure, privatisation and resource scarcity have hindered the livelihoods of younger generations in rural contexts (Chauveau, 2005). Access to land is not only fundamental for agriculture but for other resource extraction activities such as artisanal and small-scale mining, engaging an increasing number of people, including youth and women (Lanzano and Arnaldi di Balme, 2021; Mususa, 2009; Ouédraogo, 2020). These actors are consistently calling for formal recognition and support from the state.

Local contestations of foreign ownership and control over natural resources (such as land, minerals, and marine resources) refer increasingly to citizenship and collective belonging. Compensation demands, and clauses forcing foreign companies in resource extraction to secure local content (Geenen, 2019) – at times also referred to as beneficiation (meaning regulations for foreign direct investment to enhance local benefits, not least through adjustments in the tax regime) – to employ local workers or to sub-contract local businesses, are manifestations of what is sometimes dubbed as ‘resource nationalism’. Supporters of this shift emphasise citizenship as an ensemble of collective rights and entitlements over the natural wealth of one’s country, as opposed to unregulated access by (predatory) foreign investors. Political discourses motivated by this orientation can build on anti-capitalistic arguments and on the revival of a socialist past, as during Magufuli’s presidency in Tanzania with the tightening of state control on international mining companies (see Jacob and Pedersen, 2018). In other cases, they can take a more explicitly exclusionary form, such as the anti-Chinese rhetoric in the 2011 election campaign by president Michael Sata in Zambia, or the ‘war’ on artisanal gold mining in Ghana since 2017 (Ntewusu, 2018).

‘Resource nationalism’ links notions of belonging, citizenship and associated social and economic rights. It also plays out in forms of ethnicity and claims of traditional ownership rights, based on forms of regional-cultural belonging along lineage lines within a state. Controversies over who is entitled to control and regulate access to local resources add to the general dimension of citizenship as collective belonging versus ethnic particularism, which remains alive, and is also represented in local, regional and central governance forms.

The battles over resources can take extremely violent forms while dividing lines differ. They include fights over access to minerals and metals (Fisher et al., 2020), as much as xenophobic attacks on non-citizens perceived as competitors in or beneficiaries of economic activities. In South Africa, such sentiments escalated repeatedly into the looting of shops and mob lynching of people perceived as being from other African countries and therefore purged as Makwerekwere or ‘aliens’ (Matsinhe, 2011; Nyamnjoh, 2021).

Conclusion and discussion

As we suggest, social shifts in societies influence and shape engagements with citizenship in African countries. This is not happening in isolation on the African continent. Social movements, changing demography, shifts in social strata and battles over ownership of natural resources as public goods are parts of a socio-political and economic agenda-setting elsewhere too. They relate to the nature, definition, and role of citizenship, with its limits and implications increasingly debated.

Since the sovereign state in African countries had inherited citizenship as a colonial institutionalisation of entitlements and rights, the relative short period since independence in many of these societies triggered contestation and competition for such rights and entitlements. Their knowledge gains impact and relevance ‘by developing other attributes of democratic citizenship between elections – such as engaging in public events, joining others to address collective problems, and contacting political leaders – individuals can enhance the likelihood of holding leaders accountable’ (Bratton, 2013a, p. 2). Citizenship can be a powerful political argument and tool in civil struggles. Younger generations in Southern African countries governed by former liberation movements are a case in point. Socialised in sovereign states, they do not have the same patriotic loyalty to the authorities as the ‘struggle generations’ of the early postcolonial era. They claim democratic citizen rights to challenge the heroic narrative maintaining to have liberated them.

Recent mobilisations and contestations highlight the urgency of moving beyond the sloganeering of ‘one xyz, one nation’ emphatically proclaimed in anti-colonial movements and nation-building rhetoric. Such official discourses tend to ignore the need to undertake efforts turning a society often formed by colonial territorial arbitrariness or despotism and governed by divide and rule into a population with shared identities beyond having been colonial objects. Moving from divided pasts to cohesive futures (Hino, Langer, Lonsdale, and Stewart, 2019), is argued, requires more than a patriotic (pseudo)heroic narrative. Existing power structures are often criticised for remaining, to a certain extent, shaped and affected by clientelist relations based on group bonds characterised by regional-particularistic collectives of people sharing the same local culture and traditions (as articulated through language and ethnicity). This gives preference to primordial identities over general civil rights.

Citizenship also creates societal loyalty and fosters an awareness that rights come with obligations. Not only can such a ‘package’ be perceived as a risk by those in political control, who are afraid of a confident citizenry as a challenge to their privileged position. It can also turn citizenship into a common good, which would add to their legitimacy and might reduce violent forms of opposition by creating and instilling new forms of loyalty to the state and governance agencies.

Seen in such a perspective, a renewed notion of citizenship can reduce risks of violence through civic contestation by providing a national identity (and the necessary documents) to all people born in a country and/or meeting additional criteria, nurturing the values of a rights-based reciprocal individual and social contract. This inclusive and broad-based state-citizen relationship comes with obligations by the state, but also duties by the citizens (such as paying taxes, limiting disputes to non-violent means within a defined legal framework and the rule of law). Ideally, it is supported by an infrastructure in public administration able to provide the necessary access for all people to register their children for birth certificates and to obtain subsequent identity documents. Citizenship can promote an all-embracing form of commonality. Stressing bonds rather than dividing lines enhances opportunities and can reduce conflicts. Clientelist relations rooted in ethnic affinities and claims could in tendency to lose weight. This could open space for a wider sense and notion of belonging. As an UNECA report suggests, the attitude of younger generations could and should therefore be much influenced by civic education (UNECA, 2017).

Many scholars have observed how, through ‘learning interventions’ (Holma et al., 2018) and ‘citizenship education’ (Quaynor, 2015), schools would have the potential to consolidate knowledge transmission on citizenship and ultimately to provide an incentive to enhance loyalty to the overall society (Waghid and Davids, 2018). Public education and awareness campaigns cultivating constitutional values, civil rights and liberties would promote political and social integration, fostering or renewing a collective identity (Tarimo, 2011). This ‘requires delving into local conceptualizations and lived experiences of belonging rather than embarking from any ready-made ideals of citizenship’ (Kontinen and Holma, 2019, p. 5).²⁵ A citizenship-based approach aiming to create a shared sense of belonging would be an investment in social and political stability. By encouraging peaceful civic engagement, it would reinforce a model of governance under the rule of law.

Taxation is an important and widely debated component of state-citizen relations, as shown not only by political theory but also by recent discussions on tax compliance and fiscal regimes for companies and investors operating in resource extraction. A renewed social contract would enhance the opportunities to build a stronger fiscal state, where tax compliance can be more explicitly motivated by the delivery of public goods through the state. After all, ‘civic culture evolves over time reflecting the relative payoffs of civic-minded and materialistic citizens’ (Besley, 2020, p. 1308). This deepening and institutionalisation of the social contract encourages a more genuine reciprocity between the state and its citizens and will be integral to good governance and the rule of law. In several African states, the possibility to fulfil this commitment is not fully in place or has been disrupted – not least as a result of the long-term structural effects of colonial rule and the limits to subsequent nation-building. Clientelist relations often remain a strong factor hampering a general identification with state authorities, public administrations and governments, and hence also are in the way of democratisation (Agbu, 2011). The co-evolution of a shared political culture and corresponding institutions, therefore, remains an imminent challenge and task.

State-society relations still limit the establishment of welfare regimes for the benefit of all citizens. To that extent, the colonial ‘citizen/subject’ dichotomy has not yet been overcome. To reduce such limitations requires ‘increased attention to the ways in which actual states are organised in relation to services and policy delivery, and to the ways in which relations between states and citizens are constituted’ (Green, 2012, p. 24). This also entails a re-evaluation of Africa’s countries relations with the world in which the continent largely remains an economic extractive locale. Unequal global relations find expression on the ground in ethno-politics and xenophobic sentiment. A stricter focus on a uniform social policy as a service to all would reduce particularisms vested in ethnicity and other ‘identitarian’ components. The functionality of such a social contract would therefore promote citizenship as an egalitarian concept beyond differences in descent, culture, religion, gender, age, class or any other criteria. In return, governance would find higher approval throughout society.

Understood in such a way, citizenship as a concept offers an opportunity to enhance legitimacy and support, as well as identification with the state and its institutions. For the time being, however, ‘horizontal links of kinship, religion, regional affiliation, and ethnicity … have as much social weight as do vertical connections’ (Spronk, 2018, p. 316) and remain a challenge. In contrast, transformative processes through upward social mobility of the younger urban members of a growing middle class offer some encouraging insights into the evolution of identity based more on citizenship and shared lifestyles than on origin.²⁶

Political analysts show that there is no unilinear path toward democratic governance, nor are there any irreversible achievements once a certain model of citizenship is adopted. Historically, democratisation processes have been long and cumbersome, including not always peaceful political and social struggles for generations, setbacks included. However critical and contested the trajectories toward democracy may be, societies equipped with good governance based on a social contract guided by the rule of law and embracing citizenship rights stand a fair chance of reducing internal differences and violent conflicts by means of identification with the state and by fostering a society respecting pluralism. This renewed commitment to the social contract between a state and its citizens also enhances the chances of well-being in a material way. Enhancing citizenship and civic rights has almost everywhere been a step in the right direction for the benefit of most. It should be one for African societies too.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henning Melber

Henning Melber is Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria and the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, both South Africa and an Associate with the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.

Jesper Bjarnesen

Jesper Bjarnesen is Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.

Cristiano Lanzano

Cristiano Lanzano is Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, and external research associate at KULeuven, Belgium.

Patience Mususa

Patience Mususa is Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.

Notes

1 See the pioneering study by Anderson (1983).

2 According to the United Nations World Migration Report, there were an estimated 272 million (3.5 per cent of the world’s population) international migrants in 2019. As new residents in other countries, they contribute to an ongoing debate about citizenship criteria and the right to nationality.

3 See as examples the trends in edited volumes from Isin and Turner (2002); to Shachar et al. (2017); and Isin and Nyers (2019); but also already Isin and Turner (2007).

4 This volume even includes a chapter with ‘citizenship’ in its title but only contains a single paragraph on citizenship (Ribot, 2021, p. 511f.).

5 It is based in part on an initial policy paper on the social contract in Africa, see Melber et al. (2020). We thank Kajsa Hallberg Adu for her contribution to that initial text and Eleanor Fisher for valuable comments. We benefitted from suggestions by Tiina Kontinen and Ilona Steiler and two anonymous reviewers while transforming it into this considerably revised and extended version.

6 It would go beyond the scope and limitations of this paper to adequately include the general citizenship debate, which illustrates that contested citizenship is not limited to African states. For relevant engagements see among others Marshall and Bottomore (1992), Stokke (2017), as well as Turner (1990). We thank one of the reviewers for pointing out this missing link, which would require to connect the civil, political and social aspects of citizenship in the more general debate to African realities.

7 See for an overview Schattle (2009). World citizenship as a fundamental humanist principle had among others Albert Camus as a prominent advocate. In times of the Covid pandemic, the title of a review of his just-published novel ‘The Plague’ might be instructive (Spender, 1948).

8 See this aspect relating to the ‘price tag’ that comes with citizenship in various forms Milanovic (2019); summarised in his blog posting ‘globalinequality’, 10 July 2020. http://glineq.blogspot.com/2020/07/is-citizenship-just-rent_10.html.

9 ‘A home in the country – Selling citizenship is big business – and controversial’, The Economist, 29 September 2018. https://www.economist.com/international/2018/09/29/selling-citizenship-is-big-business-and-controversial. The recent growth of national schemes granting citizenship or residency in exchange for economic investments – especially in some EU countries – has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars in law, philosophy and migration studies (see among others Carrera, 2014; Mindus and Prats, 2018; Džankić, 2019; Surak, 2020).

10 See https://nai.uu.se/news-and-events/news/2018-10-30-why-southern-africa-is-the-worlds-most-unequal-region---and-what-can-be-done-about-it.html.

11 As documented among others in the variety of contributions to two recently edited volumes (Hino, Langer, Lonsdale, and Stewart, 2019; Castells and Lategan, 2021).

12 See among others Hunter (2016); Ekeh (1978).

13 See among others Ranger (1983); Salih and Markakis (1998).

14 Kaunda was born in 1924 in Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia), his parents were from Nyasaland (today’s Malawi) another part of the then Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland under British colonial administration. The decision was overruled in 1999, but citizenship remained a tool for exclusion in domestic politics. See Sebastian Kohn, ‘Abusing Citizenship in Zambia – Again’, Open Society Justice Initiative, 17 October 2011. https://www.justiceinitiative.org/voices/abusing-citizenship-zambia-again.

15 http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/africa/comcases/97-93c.html. See for the cases of Kaunda and Modise also Manby (2018a, pp. 119–122).

16 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2074401.stm. See also Dozon (2011).

17 J. Sävström, ‘What does it mean to be Ethiopian?’ The Nordic Africa Institute, 30 July 2020. https://nai.uu.se/news-and-events/news/2020-07-30-what-does-it-mean-to-be-ethiopian.html.

18 See for the latest example of Oromo mobilization Madebo (2020).

19 See also ‘Many second- and third-generation migrants in Zimbabwe remain stateless’, Nordic Africa Institute, 5 May 2020. https://nai.uu.se/news-and-events/news/2020-05-05-many-second--and-third-generation-migrants-in-zimbabwe-remain-stateless.html.

20 Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Forum 2019. Africa’s youth: jobs or migration? https://mo.ibrahim.foundation/governance-weekend/2019/forum. See also UNICEF (2017).

21 See among others Bjarnesen (2018; 2020); Lanzano (2018; 2022); Melber (2017; 2022); and Mususa (2012; 2021).

22 ‘Ghetto blasters – Uganda’s pop stars are enlivening political campaigns – and launching them’, The Economist, 19 March 2020. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/03/19/ugandas-pop-stars-are-enlivening-political-campaigns-and-launching-them.

23 ‘Taxing social media in Africa’, The Internet Health Report 2019, April 2019. https://internethealthreport.org/2019/taxing-social-media-in-africa/.

24 See chapter 1 in World Bank (2018) for an extensive discussion.

25 For an instructive follow-up to this approach see the contributions on the meaning(s) of citizenship more generally and the case studies on Uganda and Tanzania in Holma and Kontinen (2022).

26 See for an example the case studies on young Kenyans in Nairobi (Neubert, 2019).