The issue basis of rural politics in Africa

Abstract

Much of the literature on African politics still centers on the "glorious" period of the nationalist era; this paper is no exception. This paper is based on the supposition that further analysis of the politics of the nationalist era is appropriate because, it contends. there has been a lack of understanding of several of its essential features. The paper will reexamine rural politics in the nationalist period and will do so by isolating for discussion a relatively autonomous rural political agenda: a set of issues indigenous to the countryside that led to political protest by village dwellers. In so doing, it will focus primarily upon economic issues. These issues deserve treatment not only because they have been underplayed in the literature thus far, but also because they did not go away with the end of colonial rule. The political energies which they unleashed in the nationalist era therefore remain to be tapped in the present, with serious implications for the politics of contemporary Africa.

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