"Perhaps the post-colonial moment has passed." This is how political scientist, Crawford Young, summed up his seminal essay that fretted "The end of the post-colonial state in Africa," eroded by "the complex web of novel civil conflicts" in the 1990s, the rise of informal politics involving local societies and diminished role in service provision (African Affairs, 2004).
In a blissful sense, and in contrast to Young's forlorn narrative, the recently concluded 14th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad) in Nairobi heralds the end of the thinking, cultural legacies and economic burdens which have defined Africa's role in global geopolitics.
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