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Three factors stood out like a sore finger during the recent Think Tank for Sustainable Development (TTTSD) webinar titled “Reinventing Tribalism to Work for Africa’s Development.” They are “Appointing only people from one’s ethnic group into positions of power is not tribalism; it is cronyism because those who get the positions are not necessarily the best from the tribe but friends and associates of the appointer.”
Secondly, “Taking all projects to your village or LGA is not tribalism because many of those projects end up not being viable and not useful to the tribe. Nigeria is littered with such abandoned projects.”
And thirdly, “Voting for someone from your tribe regardless of capacity is not tribalism, but sentimentalism, because ultimately an incompetent person does not benefit the tribe.”
These few subjects provoke as much passion across Africa as tribalism. It is blamed for electoral tensions, uneven development, and patronage politics and, in some cases, violent conflict. For many, it remains the continent’s most persistent obstacle to national structure.
But what if tribal identity is not the problem? What if, instead, Africa’s challenge lies in how those identities are expressed and exploited?
This question formed the heart of a compelling intervention by sociologist and Ford Foundation Regional Director for West Africa, Dr. ChiChi Aniagolu, during a recent webinar hosted by the Think Tank for Sustainable Development (TTTSD). Speaking to the cross-sector audience on the theme, “Reinventing Tribalism to Work for Africa’s Development, Aniagolu argued that Africa’s deepest cultural bonds could become powerful engines of development if redirected away from competition and towards community advancement.
Rather than joining the familiar debate between defenders of tribal identity and advocates of its eradication, she proposed that transforming the social energy embedded in ethnic and cultural affiliations into a force for economic and social progress for Africans.
“As Nigeria and many African nations confront complex socio-economic challenges, the role of citizens, institutions and communities in shaping a more equitable future cannot be overstated,” she said. “Africa’s social and cultural identities must be harnessed as catalysts for progress rather than division.”
Aniagolu challenged common assumptions about what constitutes tribalism, arguing that many practices routinely described as tribal are, in reality, something else entirely.
Political appointments restricted to friends and associates from a leader’s ethnic group, she noted, are better understood as cronyism. Voting for an incompetent candidate simply because of shared ancestry is sentimentalism. Diverting public projects to one’s hometown without regard for public benefit is patronage. None of these, according to her represent genuine tribal loyalty.
Instead, Aniagolu defined tribalism as the organization of people around shared cultural, ancestral or ideological identities. At its core, she said, it is rooted not in hostility towards outsiders but in a natural commitment to one’s own community.
“Nothing generates more intense conversation or raw passion among Africans than the subject of the tribe,” she observed that “Almost every systemic challenge that Africa faces today is ultimately linked back to tribalism. But the common perception of tribalism as a purely destructive, regressive force is an incomplete narrative. The foundational core of tribalism is not hatred for the outsider, but an innate, evolutionary devotion to one’s own community.”
The real challenge, according to her, is changing the direction of that devotion.
While she thinks that turning community pride into development, Aniagolu’s vision involves shifting tribal identity from outward competition to inward development.
Rather than defining success through dominance over rival groups or access to state resources, communities would focus on improving the welfare of their own people. Pride would be measured through educational attainment, healthcare outcomes, infrastructure, innovation and economic opportunity.
In such a model, communities would compete not over political power but over development indicators.
“Instead of directing its focus outward in a posture of defence or aggression against neighbouring communities, the redefined tribe turns its gaze inward,” she explained. “Pride becomes directly tethered to tangible, measurable metrics of human and structural development within the community itself.”
The result, she suggested, would be a form of constructive competition capable of accelerating grassroots development across the continent.
“Imagine a nation where communities compete on innovation, literacy and infrastructure,” she said. “This turns friction into collaborative growth.”
Aniagolu also challenged the notion that today’s ethnic tensions are inherent features of African societies.
Drawing on the scholarship of African thinkers such as Mahmood Mamdani and Archie Mafeje, she argued that the adversarial forms of tribal politics visible today are largely products of colonial governance systems.” The hyper-adversarial manifestation of tribalism on the continent is not an ancient, inherent African flaw.” She noted that pre-colonial Africa was marked by “fluid, porous boundaries, intermarriage, and flexible trade networks.”
Before colonial rule, many African societies maintained fluid identities characterized by intermarriage, migration, and trade and overlapping cultural affiliations. Colonialism dismantled that fluidity through four mechanisms which include arbitrary boarders, hierarchical favoritism, codification of identity and skewed resource distribution. Colonial administrations disrupted this flexibility through arbitrary borders, preferential treatment of selected groups, rigid ethnic classifications and unequal distribution of resources.
In Nigeria, she noted, colonial investments concentrated on coastal regions and economically strategic areas, creating disparities that later fuelled political competition after independence.
“This is the cycle we are still trapped in,” she warned. “In the post-colonial era, ethnic identity has been weaponized by political elites competing for centralised state resources. This transforms democratic elections into ethnic censuses, where policy debates are sidelined by identity politics.” She therefore urged Africa to dismantle the imperial executive power, build inclusive civic identities, and create equitable governance systems while pointing to indigenous models that already worked.
For Aniagolu, post-independence African leaders did not suppress identities to build states; they leveraged communal ethics. Therefore, the solution is not theoretical. Africa already possesses numerous examples of communal identities driving development.
She pointed to Tanzania’s Ujamaa philosophy and Kenya’s Harambee movement, both of which mobilized communities to build schools, roads and health facilities through collective effort rather than dependence on central government funding.
Nigeria, she argued, offers equally powerful examples.
Among the Igbo tradition, the Igba-Boi apprenticeship system and town unions has created generations of entrepreneurs through structured mentorship and community investment. Town unions continue to finance markets, scholarships and infrastructure projects through collective contributions.
The Yoruba Omoluabi philosophy promotes character, responsibility and communal advancement, while traditions of Amana and community-based agricultural cooperation in Northern Nigeria have long supported economic and educational development.
These examples demonstrate that cultural identity and modern development are not opposing forces. Properly harnessed, they can reinforce one another.
Again, she said” When ethnic identity is channeled inward, it ceases to be a tool for division,” “It becomes a direct catalyst for development.” She adds that “Imagine a nation where communities compete on innovation, on literacy, and on infrastructure. This will turn friction into collaborative growth.”
Aniagolu also cautioned against attempts to erase ethnic identities in pursuit of national unity.
History, she argued, shows that efforts to suppress cultural belonging often produce the opposite effect.
From Mobutu Sese Seko’s Authenticité campaign in former Zaire to policies of cultural assimilation in Ethiopia and Cameroon, attempts to impose singular national identities frequently deepened grievances and fuelled resistance.
She suggested that Nigeria’s post-civil war experience likewise illustrates the psychological costs of demanding that communities distance themselves from their heritage.
“When a state acts as an existential threat intent on erasing local identity, it completely breaks the psychological contract between the citizen and the state,” she said.
True nation-building, she argued, does not require the elimination of cultural identities. Instead, it requires creating a civic framework in which every community feels respected, represented and secure.
“True national cohesion is built by creating a shared civic identity where every group feels secure, represented and valued.”
At its core, Aniagolu’s argument is a call for a decolonial reimagining of development.
Rather than treating ethnic identities as liabilities that must be controlled, she believes African societies should view them as assets capable of mobilizing people around shared goals.
For her, reinventing tribalism means replacing exclusion with responsibility, rivalry with self-improvement, and ethnic pride with measurable contributions to community welfare.
“Loving your tribe should not mean demanding unearned privileges at the expense of others,” she said. “Loving your tribe should mean refusing to let your homeland stay in darkness. It means building hospitals, training youth and preserving your heritage through tangible, real-world investments.”
As Africa continues to search for models of development rooted in its own realities, her message offers a striking proposition: the continent’s future may depend less on abandoning its cultural identities than on discovering how to deploy them more effectively.
“The path forward for Africa does not require choosing between ancestral heritage and modern advancement, “The true genius of African development lies in synthesis, she concluded.
