Why “Tribalism” Is a Colonial Invention, Not an African Tradition

“Tribalism” is one of the most common explanations offered whenever Africa’s political tensions or conflicts are discussed. It appears in headlines, policy briefings, and casual conversations as a kind of shorthand. Africans fight because they are tribal. African politics is tribal. African societies are divided by tribal loyalties.

The problem is that this explanation is deeply misleading. More than that, it is historically inaccurate.

What we now describe as tribalism is not an ancient African instinct or cultural flaw. It is a concept shaped, hardened, and weaponised during colonial rule. Before colonialism, identity across the continent existed, but it did not operate in the rigid, exclusionary way that the word “tribe” implies today.

Identity Before Colonial Rule Was Flexible and Layered

Precolonial African societies did not organise themselves around fixed, sealed ethnic boxes. Identity was real, but it was relational and situational.

People belonged to families, lineages, age groups, religious communities, professional guilds, kingdoms, and trading networks at the same time. Which identity mattered most depended on context. Trade, marriage, migration, war, and diplomacy all shaped how people understood who they were and where they belonged.

In West Africa, empires such as Mali and Songhai governed vast territories that included dozens of linguistic and cultural communities. Loyalty was often to the empire, the ruler, or the trading system rather than to a single ethnic label. People moved across regions and assimilated into new communities through marriage, work, and shared religious practice.

In parts of Southern Africa, communities such as the Khoekhoe, San, Nguni, and Sotho-Tswana groups interacted constantly. Boundaries shifted as people moved in response to climate, cattle, and opportunity. These were not isolated tribes living in permanent hostility. They were societies in motion.

Even in places with strong ethnic identities, such as Ethiopia or the Great Lakes region, identity operated on multiple levels at once. A person could be tied to a clan, a kingdom, a profession, and a faith without seeing those affiliations as contradictory.

None of this suggests a conflict-free past. Disputes existed, sometimes violently so. But they were not driven by immutable tribal hatred. They were shaped by power, resources, alliances, and political ambition, just as conflicts are everywhere else.

Colonialism Needed Simplicity and Control

Colonial rule disrupted this complexity.

European administrators arrived with bureaucratic systems that required clear categories. To tax, govern, police, and control populations, they needed to know who people were, where they belonged, and who spoke for them.

Fluid identities were inconvenient. Overlapping loyalties were confusing. Negotiated authority was inefficient.

So colonial administrations simplified African societies into fixed tribes, each with a name, a territory, and a recognised chief. In many cases, these chiefs were invented, appointed, or elevated beyond any authority they previously held.

Colonial censuses forced people to choose a single identity, even when that identity had never been exclusive. Colonial education systems taught children to see themselves primarily as members of tribes. Colonial courts applied customary law that was often codified by outsiders who misunderstood or reshaped local practices.

Identity became frozen in place.

What had once been flexible became rigid. What had once been negotiated became inherited. What had once been overlapping became mutually exclusive.

When Identity Became a Tool of Power

Perhaps the most tragic illustration of this process occurred in Rwanda.

Before colonial rule, the categories Hutu and Tutsi existed, but they functioned more as social and economic distinctions than racial or ethnic ones. People could move between them. Wealth, cattle ownership, and patronage mattered more than ancestry.

Belgian colonial authorities transformed these categories into racial identities. They introduced identity cards that permanently labelled individuals as Hutu or Tutsi. Physical traits were measured. Pseudoscientific racial theories were applied.

This hardening of identity did not create immediate violence, but it laid the groundwork for catastrophe. By the time of the 1994 genocide, these colonial categories had been internalised, politicised, and weaponised in ways that proved devastating.

Rwanda is not an isolated case. Across Africa, colonial regimes used identity to divide populations and prevent unified resistance. The British policy of indirect rule in Nigeria reinforced divisions between Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo communities, often exaggerating differences for administrative convenience. In Kenya, colonial authorities classified and ranked ethnic groups in ways that still shape political competition today.

Colonialism did not invent difference. It transformed difference into hierarchy and rivalry.

The Colonial Afterlife of “Tribalism”

When African states gained independence, they inherited borders, institutions, and political systems built on these colonial categories. New leaders did not have the luxury of starting from scratch.

In many cases, politicians learned to mobilise the same identities that colonial administrators had imposed. Ethnic appeals became tools for winning elections, distributing resources, and consolidating power. What had once been imposed from outside was now reproduced from within.

This is often cited as proof that Africans are inherently tribal. In reality, it shows how deeply colonial structures continue to shape political behaviour.

The persistence of the word “tribalism” in media and policy discourse reinforces this misunderstanding. When conflicts in Europe are explained through ideology, economics, or history, conflicts in Africa are reduced to tribal hatred. This framing strips African societies of political agency and historical context.

It also absolves colonialism of its role in shaping the present.

Rethinking Identity and Responsibility

Challenging the myth of tribalism does not mean denying contemporary ethnic tensions. It means understanding their origins properly.

Identity is not destiny. It is constructed, shaped, and reshaped by political systems, economic pressures, and historical events. African societies are not uniquely burdened by identity politics. They are navigating forms of it that were intensified under colonial rule and frozen into modern state structures.

Across the continent, people continue to live with layered identities that defy simple labels. Urbanisation, migration, intermarriage, and digital culture are creating new forms of belonging that sit alongside older ones.

The real danger lies in continuing to tell Africans that their divisions are ancient, inevitable, and self-inflicted. That story was useful to empire. It remains useful to those who benefit from low expectations and shallow analysis.

The tragedy is not that Africa is too tribal. It is that the world continues to believe in a concept designed to divide and control. Letting go of that myth is not just an academic exercise. It is a necessary step toward understanding African politics, history, and possibility on their own terms.