By Mussie Delelegn Arega

Marginalization, involves the establishment of political systems that prioritize ethnic identity at the expense of inclusive political narratives. It includes overt or covert denial of access to productive resources such as land, agricultural inputs, capital, and biased dominance of certain ethnic groups in economic sectors and employment opportunities. It encompasses unequal access to key public services, as well as the prioritization of infrastructure development and developmental opportunities for specific ethnic, linguistic, religious, or political groups. Rules, and regulations may also be designed to serve the interests of the ruling ethnic group(s), while ethnic-based biases and skewed allocation of resources persist.

These problems were prevalent during the colonial and post-colonial periods in SSA and continue to contribute to corruption, interethnic conflicts, civil wars, coup d’états, and overall political instability, with severe impacts on the socioeconomic development and progress of the region.

The irony is that these issues remain unaddressed, unrecognized, or entirely ignored in Africa’s socioeconomic and political discourses, despite some academic and research-based writings pointing to the problems and offering potential solutions. The political and educated elites of the sub-region are often criticized for prioritizing personal influence and self-aggrandizement over collectively seeking practical solutions to complex socioeconomic challenges and problems.

Another paradox that requires careful examination is the political history of countries in SSA. They united and fought valiantly to free themselves from slavery, colonialism, and resource exploitation. This raises the question of why SSA is now plagued by ethnolinguistic or religious fractionalization, polarization, and conflicts.

Why don’t we learn from our own history and unite our efforts, visions, knowledge, and resources to overcome underdevelopment, poverty, marginalization, and multiple forms of deprivation faced by our people and societies? Why don’t we collectively build our socioeconomic resilience to mitigate the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and deadly diseases? How long will we continue to lament the past and attribute our interethnic, linguistic, or religious divisions solely to the era of divide and rule?

In my opinion, socioeconomic underdevelopment, poverty, disease, and climate change do not recognize national boundaries or ethnic and religious identities. These common challenges and problems affect all of us, regardless of any specific identity.

Countries like Ethiopia, which have a long history of independence and fought against colonialism and apartheid alongside other countries in SSA, struggle to maintain peace within their own borders. Beyond poverty and underdevelopment, Ethiopia’s internal conflicts have become vicious, protracted, widespread, costly, and devastating. They have shifted from economic or class-based conflicts in the 1970s to increasingly ethnolinguistic conflicts, particularly since the country adopted an ethnolinguistic identity-based political system in 1991.

These are serious questions and issues that necessitate collective reflection, understanding, and response. Surprisingly, political elites, wealthy ethnic entrepreneurs, and so-called intellectuals behind ethnic identity-based political narratives in SSA have shamelessly exploited the sub-region’s potential, opportunities, and virtues, often favoring one ethnic or religious group over others.

This exploitation, combined with nepotism and corruption under an ethnic-based political framework, is not only prevalent but also accompanied by a complete rejection or denial of the devastating impacts it carries. Furthermore, there is a total reluctance to address the root causes of conflicts and instabilities. Rather than seeking solutions, SSA’s political elites are occupied with prophesying, mesmerizing, and stupefying poverty and marginalization, attributing them to “divine interventions” or the “law of positive attraction.” Such rejection and blind denial conceal our political viewpoints and narrow our technical knowledge, undermining our collective capacity to seek solutions to the problems that cause and result from our underdevelopment.

What is even more disturbing is that ethnolinguistic or religious identity-based political narratives have become the quickest path to political power and personal enrichment for individuals. These narratives have created fertile ground for the emergence of ethnic entrepreneurs and fostered rent-seeking behaviors among ethnocratic regimes and political elites. Undoubtedly, they have also contributed to ethnic fractionalization, polarization, interethnic tensions, and devastating conflicts.

Economic and political policy making that marginalizes certain groups and engenders feelings of exclusion, whether real or perceived, hinders the development of positive and synergistic state-population relations. It also widens credibility gaps and intensifies mutual mistrust, making political consensus, state formation, and nation-building increasingly unattainable. Numerous studies clearly demonstrate that broken state-people relations, when ignored or left unaddressed, easily lead to armed conflicts or civil wars.

The World Bank, in one of its earlier studies, provided evidence-based analyses, arguing that “ethnic cleavage can affect development outcomes, influence the internal organization of governments, and the allocation of public spending, resulting in an unequal distribution of public goods and services, heightened rent-seeking behaviors, and reduced efficiency of public spending.” Clearly, such circumstances can easily lead marginalized groups to complete dissatisfaction, rebellion, and eventually to conflicts and civil unrest unless promptly remedied.

Mussie Delelegn Arega (PhD) is Acting Head of Productive Capacities and Sustainable Development Branch in the Division for Africa, LDCs and Special Programs at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the views of UNCTAD or the United Nations. The author can be reached at ([email protected]).