In The Illusion of the Post-Colonial State, William Fawole artfully and intelligently rewrites the political science rulebook on the African postcolonial state. Taking a distinctive multi-disciplinary and multi-country approach, Fawole takes the reader on an illuminating tour of the discursive milestones in the evolution of a much-contested institution. The result is a bracing and historically grounded analysis that will appeal equally to students of Africa’s international relations, postcolonial history, state-society relations, foreign policy, and democratization.

Ebenezer Obadare, University of Kansas

The Illusion of the Post-Colonial State is an excellent, engaging, and illuminating book. With significant examples from different regions of Africa, Fawole challenges the dominant approach to the analyses of Africa as a post-colonial formation. He reinterprets Africa’s history in refreshing ways while encouraging a reconsideration of the bases of the continent’s core complications.

Wale Adebanwi, University of Oxford

Is Africa post-colonial, neo-colonial, or post-colonized? This important intervention takes on board the dominant orthodoxy in the ways we think about the historical foundations of the political and economic travails of contemporary Africa and its future. It builds upon a critical tradition of writing about Africa in this regard to unearth what it calls the Big Lie of post-colonial statehood in Africa and its implications for an understanding of the trajectory of governance, security and development on the continent. In 13 core chapters, the book raises key conceptual and theoretical issues, grounded in rich empirical illustrations from all the five sub-regions of the continent, about the way we perceive study, analyze, understand, explain and address the past, present and future of the continent in a manner that illuminates what it considers the real character of the state in Africa.

This is a refreshing and mature voice, tempered by the author’s more than three decades of teaching and research on Africa in Africa. It is compulsory reading for all those interested in the continent, and particularly for those not afraid to consider challenges to orthodoxies long held, or to engage other options for thinking about and encountering the state in Africa’s governance, security and development—past, present, and future.

Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan