3 - State Failure, Crisis of Governance and Disengagement from the State in Africa

The post-colonial state in Africa has continued to dominate the publicspace on the continent in spite of its well advertised failings. It is widelyacknowledged in the literature that the African state has utterly failed inachieving material advancement for its people, leading disenchantedand frustrated citizens to take a ‘flight’ from the state and developparallel structures to tend to their socio-economic and cultural needs.This situation, symptomatic of a crisis of governance, provides immediateexplanation for the contested character of Africa’s public sphere.This paper examines the nature of contestation in Africa’s public spherebetween the two dominant actors in the sphere – the state and civilsociety, the ideological underpinnings of this contestation and theimpact of domestic and external contexts on the contestation. The paperobserves that the declining capacity of the state for social provisioningprovides the context for citizens’ withdrawal from the public spaceoccupied by the state. The paper argues that disengagement from thestate, apart from not serving the interest of both the state and civilsociety, has serious implications for governing Africa’s public sphere.