Abstract

Akosua Pele Mahama1* and Kwadwo Yeboah Desailly2

Civil strife continues to engulf the continent of Africa with devastating political effects. Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sudan and Somalia have suffered recurrent civil wars over the past three decades. Towards the end of the twentieth century, Africa experienced a surge of ethnic conflicts. Ethnic identity continues to be a potent force in contemporary politics as it was in the colonial era. It has been established that Africa’s ethnic disturbances have occurred more within national borders, thus giving rise to unstable domestic systems. These conflicts mostly arise out of disagreements over a plethora of issues including land, chieftaincy, resource allocation and environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to present some critical issues related to the contentious debate on the Ethio-Eritrean historiography. The Ethiopianist’s assertion of the Ethiopianness of Eritreans and the counter colonialist thesis of Eritrean nationalists have been studied under two divergent schools of thought that have produced multifarious ramification on the historiography of the states. The researchers contend that the root of this divergence is the intellectual dependency of the post-colonial scholars of the region on the colonial knowledge fabric about the state which, in turn, is worsened by the politicized historical socialization spearheaded by both the Ethiopianist and Eritrean nationalists. Thus, the divergence is rested on the failure of the intellectuals of the region in rediscovering or revisiting the diverse interconnections among the people coming out of the territory with centric colonial mentality transplanted towards Africa during the colonial conquest. Thus, this paper tries to depict the tides of such mind set.