Englebert, Pierre, and Rebecca Hummel. "Let's Stick Together: Understanding Africa's Secessionist Deficit". African Affairs, Vol.104, No.416 (2005): 399-427.

Englebert, Pierre, and Rebecca Hummel. "Let's Stick Together: Understanding Africa's Secessionist Deficit". African Affairs, Vol.104, No.416 (2005): 399-427.

• Despite the prevalence of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa, the region has seen very few secessionist movements. The likelihood of secessionism driving a conflict is lower in Africa than in any other global region except for the Americas, despite the diversity and weakness of African states (399-400).
• The authors hypothesize that one of the reason that African states generally do not suffer from secessionism is that the international order has made it politically and economically costly for states to declare unilateral independence, meaning that incentives to do so are limited. At the same time, corrupt state apparatus are often willing to negotiate settlements and de facto partitions of territory. This means that would-be African secessionists can get the benefits of secession without the substantial costs (400).
• A full list of all African secessionist movements is available on page 401.
• The authors outline a number of proximal factors likely to increase the likelihood of secessionist conflict, with young countries, those with geographical divisions or enclaves, geographically concentrated minorities, large ethnic diasporas, high levels of perceived economic inequality, low levels of education and high levels of unemployment, natural resource deposits, and those with other ongoing conflicts all more likely to experience secessionist conflict. Conflicts were also more likely after the conclusion of the Cold War (404-406).
• A regression analysis of the instances of secessions in Africa found that the only factors with a significant effect on the instance of secessionist movements in Africa were the presence of enclaves, large diasporas, and other ongoing violence. Importantly, the absence of these factors accounted for the lack of secessionism in the Americas, but not in Africa (407-408).
• Traditional explanations of secessionism tend to focus on ethnic or cultural divisions, however, these fail to explain most recent secessionist movements in Africa or elsewhere. While geographically constrained ethnic communities do exist in some parts of Africa, most secessionist movements have not occurred in ethnic or cultural lines: neither Eritrea, Somaliland, nor Katanga were ethnically homogenous (409-410).
• Dr. Crawford Young has suggested that the lack of 'organic' national identities in African states has made regional political identities pointless, since regions are just as artificial divisions as states. This logic, however, ignores prominent nationalism in many African states, including many exclusive and ethnic definitions of nationality (410).
• The authors argue that African elites do not subscribe, and did not historically ascribed, to the integral nation-state from genuine affection, but because they had material interests in maintaining and exploiting weak 'artificial' states'. Self-interested elites then created nationalist rhetoric to justify the continuation of 'artificial' states, creating actual nationalism among the population (411, 417).
• While elites could potential receive even greater material benefits from control over weak states borne from secession, those states which have attempted to secede in Africa have generally failed to find international support, making it more difficult to acquire independence and reducing the material benefits of securing that independence (412).
• International recognition is also a powerful source of legitimacy in Africa, often making up for a lack of domestic legitimacy due to widespread profiteering and corruption. Recognition also means access to international assistance and financing, regardless of one's actual level of territorial control in one's country (413).
• The mediated benefits of international recognition and the associated benefits for regional elites mean that continued participation in national politics, regardless of local grievances or the emptiness of national identity, benefits them through access to additional financial opportunities and state resources, and more legal leeway (414-415).
• The commodity export based economies present in most African countries make separatism particularly difficult because these export industries are particularly dependent on official contracts and international recognition, meaning African economies require recognition to continue functioning, making secession untenable (417).
• Those cases of secessionism in Africa usually depended on claims to separate colonial existence prior to independence, often manifesting in separate administrations and elites. The two prominent examples of this are Somaliland and Eritrea, which had been separate entities from Somalia and Ethiopia. This separate history makes elites think that they can acquire international legitimacy more easily (418-419).
• Even in cases where actual historic independence was weak, such as South Sudan or Katanga, the existence of separate institutions, laws, or buildings provided powerful symbolic tools for elites to foment regional nationalism and international support. Similar institutions were leveraged by separatist movements in the USSR (419-420).
• Secessionist conflict in Africa was also distinctly concentrated during two time periods: the 1960s and the 1990s. During both of these periods, the state was weak in most African states, which were either just adjusting following decolonization or had experienced a sudden drop in support following the end of the Cold War (421-422).
• The lack of international support for secessionism in Africa means that political elites and others feel trapped inside dysfunctional nation-states, perpetuating unfair and deeply problematic political structures by denying opportunities for radical change at the regional level (424).
• The focus entirely on national identity regardless of the weakness of these claims in a deeply flawed and unpopular states engenders harmful and parochial ethnic identities. Since national identity does not guarantee benefits in a corrupt system, clientistic relations, usually based around exclusive conceptions of ethnicity, are used to organize and regulate access to patronage and state institutions (425).