المستخلص: |
With global strategic changes after the Cold War, there was a great hope that Africa would stabilize and move away from the specters of civil wars and ethnic conflicts. However, since then, we have witnessed a great deal of internal conflicts. Indeed, most internal conflicts in the post-Cold War era occurred in Africa. Many researchers explained this as a result of failures of state-building and integration after independence, given the diversity and plurality in African societies. This article addresses an important issue concerning the state-building crisis in the African Sahel. It highlights the particularities of African state, reasons and factors of its state-building crisis, and the most important challenges facing development and state-building in the Sahel. It also links the state-building crisis and issues of state failure and lawlessness, and the lack of political and social stability. It concludes that this failure is due to structural reasons (i.e. internal environment) as well as systemic reasons (i.e. external environment). The state building process must be based on the local characteristics of African societies without importing models and ready-made templates for judgment. Thus, the study confirms that state in Africa in general, and in the Sahel region in particular, was created deformed in terms of legal and political structures, due to following European models without taking into account anthropological and societal considerations
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