This week, we get to hear Dr Abdourahmane Idrissa, a Nigerien philosopher and political scientist based in Leiden but who has worked and lived all around the world. Idrissa’s areas of research expertise include the state, Islam, democracy, and security in the Sahel and West Africa more broadly.

In this episode, he speaks with Henry and Gaddafi a truly wide range of subjects, from the impact of 9/11 on his academic path to the birth and death of the Songhai empire, and from the intellectual prophets of the 1960s to West African social structure - and, of course, the security crises in the Sahel.

David Ehrarhdt

Welcome to Africa Knows.

This week we get to hear Dr Abdourahamane Idrissa, a Nigerian philosopher and political scientist who's based in Leiden but has worked and lived all around the world. Idrissa's areas of research expertise include the state, Islam, democracy and security in Sahel and West Africa more broadly.

And in this episode, he speaks with Henry and Gaddafi about a truly wide range of subjects, from the impact of 9/11 on his own academic path to the birth and death of the Songhai Empire, and all the different kinds of social structure that characterize northern Nigeria in the Sahel, and from the intellectual profits of the nineteen-sixties in West Africa, and of course, the security crisis in the Sahel. Here is Dr. Idrissa.

Gaddafi Abubakar

What do you find so important about being an academic?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Well, this is a tricky question, because being an academic usually means that you produce knowledge and then you disseminate knowledge. And the producing of it is the important part. Of course, it is also the exciting part.

I think the disseminating of it is also very important because you have to have this kind of public engagement. Otherwise,... you know how it is in Africa: whenever you kind of even present something about your results, people will ask you, so what is the use of this? Okay, you kind of described all the problems. Do you have any idea of solutions?

So disseminating is important, but it's also the tricky part because you don't know to whom you'll disseminate, in which conditions, with what kind of responses you'll find. But I will say those two things like producing knowledge and disseminating it.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Great. So how do you come to your research topics? What do you find important about them?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

If I look back, I have the impression that I came to my topic partly by accident.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Okay.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And partly because there are some stuff I'm obsessed with. For instance, right now, my main topic is. Is the state.

Gaddafi Abubakar

The state?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, it's. It's about the state. Okay. And I think, well, if you look back to my career, I started my studies in philosophy, not in what I'm doing now.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Interesting.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I was a philosopher. I was studying philosophy in Senegal, in Dakar. That was in the 1990s.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Wow.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

So it was a long time ago.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And in the 1990s, my country, Niger, was in the throes of democratization, and it was a very chaotic democratization process. You had in the 1990s, you have two coup d' états. You have something that they call cohabitation, which is like what American called the divided government, where you have the president is from one party, the prime minister is from another party. You had a strike from the president. So you have all kind of bizarre things going on. And at that time, it was in, in Senegal, studying philosophy.

I was not understanding what was happening in Niger. And so there was a point when in Dakar, they opened a program of political science that was open to everyone from the social sciences and humanities.

And I decided to go there just to pose my studies in philosophy and do a diploma in political science aimed at understanding what was happening in Niger. So I went there. But chance had it that one of the professors was teaching there, he's an American professor who was a visiting professor with a Fulbright funding, Leonardo Villalon, a specialist of political Islam. And he kind of liked the thesis that I wrote. He supervised it and then convinced me to basically apply to a Fulbright and come and study in the US.

Well, he, he didn't convince me easily because when you study philosophy, you have this, you know… Yeah, arrogance, like, how can I leave philosophy to study this thing? Political science. This is just a parenthesis. But he, he was very persuasive.

And in the end I thought, okay, if I leave philosophy to go and study political science, what would be really important for that to happen?

And the thing that popped to my mind is the state, because I, I had this sense that most of the problems of African countries came from disorder and disorganization. There's lots of potential, there is lots of wealth, but there's no order. So, and the political order, I kind of linked it to the state.

So I decided, okay, if I go and study political science, then it has to be about the state. Unfortunately, this is not what happened because first, Leonardo Villalon, he is into political Islam, he was also very interested in democratization. So he kind of wanted me to do the things that he's interested in. I did refuse and he kind of: okay, if you don't want, okay.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Oh, yeah, yeah. Very unfortunate time.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. And Then. (...) See, political Islam is important.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yes.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

So it kind of managed to rope me back into, into political Islam and democratization. And in the end, my dissertation was about that. Towards the end of the 2000s. But after I, I did my dissertation on political Islam and democratization in Niger.

So I applied to a scholarship. A fellowship. No, postdoctoral fellowship. It was a kind of super duper. A postdoctoral fellowship of two years.

One year in Oxford, one year in Princeton. I got it and the idea for me was to develop a kind of expertise of the political economy of the state. That was the kind of ambition.

And, and, and then also. But by that time I had become very wary of the state.

Henry Mang

Why was that?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Because then I, to me, I kind of. I kind of realized that the state is this huge concentration of power that really kind of crushes people. I did.

Henry Mang

So it brought your philosophy to be…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. So I decided, I became, okay, the state is important. Maybe we need to have it because we are in a world of states.

If you don't have a state, you are going to be, you know, you don't exist. Yeah. You have to be crushed by people who have a state. Look at Israel and Palestine. Exactly. It's the story. Yeah. It's because they don't have a state.

The Palestine, the Israelis are doing whatever they want with them. And so we probably need to have a state. But then it's this concentration of power that usually also you kind of put in hand of someone.

And so, yes, the state is interesting, but how do you tame it? It's like a monster. You know, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called it a cold monster.

So because of that, in the end, the work that I did in Oxford and Princeton, actually, it was about regional integration. Because my idea was that in any case, the states in West Africa, they're kind of not viable on their own.

Henry Mang

So they needed a hegemony.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

They need. Yeah, there is this idea of hegemony. Yes, of course. Or leadership or something like that. But what I was looking at was from the point of view of the public, not from the point of view of the state. And my impression was that in West Africa, the public was more advanced in terms of integration than the states.

And the states are like obstacles rather than, rather than like real driving agents.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Of regional integration. So I, I did this work on regional integration for the first one on, the West African Economic and Monastery Union. The second one on ecowas. Went back to Niger after that, with the idea of creating a research institute on political economy. Because my impression was that…Well, it's not an impression, it was a conviction or even a kind of sense of outrage that Niger is one of the poorest countries of the world, if not the poorest. But people do not really care about economy. You don't have any debate on economy. You don't have economic culture in the country.

Maybe we'll get to that later in the conversation. But what. The things that you're saying, seeing in Niger demonstrate how people are just blind to economy, to economics.

Henry Mang

So there's no structure.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

They don't, I mean, the leaders of thought, you, what do they call, what did you call them? The leaders of thought do not care about the economics.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Okay

Abdourahamane Idrissa

That's what I mean. So you don't even have debates on economic problems. You don't have debate on social justice issues, you know, all those things.

And for me, the political economy is interesting because it has, it covers society, the economy and politics. It has this kind of three dimensional…

So I kind of went back to Niger and the idea was because at that time they were creating a social science, a political science department.

So my idea was that to kind of create a program on political economy in that department… didn't happen, because in universities there are lots of politics and some people just don't like the idea. Yeah, I was sabotaged.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

But I did manage to, because I came back with money. I raised money in England, okay.

And they came back with money and created a training program in political economy that kind of lasted two years where I actually gave scholarship to students instead of them registering. Because my idea was that, okay, I'm gonna try these youngsters and, and then they will become the staff of this institution.

And so, yeah, I did it for two years and the third year I decided to create the institute. But it kind of coincided with the victory of Muhammad Yusuf at the presidency in Niger.

And at that time, Ahmad Yusuf decided to recruit, because Niger civil service had been basically, there were no recruitment for years. So when he came to power, okay, now we can, maybe we can try to replenish the civil service.

And so lots of graduates were recruited in all sectors into the, you know, the state service, including all the students….

Gaddafi Abubakar

Into the mainstream civil service.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

They all ll went there, you know, which is good for them.

Gaddafi Abubakar

In terms of the reward system?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I mean, Yeah, they have, at least they have, they have a permanent job.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

You know, which is not something that I was going to give them immediately because the idea was to basically build the thing from bottom up, have money and etc. It would, it would have taken time. They were ready to take the time, but now they have all those jobs. So, so, so they went there.

So I ended up changing the institute project into a think tank because that's more flexible and they can actually participate in it even if they're not, you know, so.

And that think tank actually worked pretty well and to the point that actually towards the end the research agenda that I have been developing in Leiden, a lot of it was being implemented by the think tank in Niger.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And I don't think it didn't develop as fast as I wanted it to because I took time. Something came up, the security crisis in the Sahel, which was kind of tied with these jihadist outfits.

So I had thought that with my thesis dissertation I had left political Islam behind, but no, because with the security crisis people were, were mightily interested in what was happening in the side in terms of Islam, etc. So I did have many contracts with my think tank to work on that.

I wrote it in English, then later on translated it into French, but, but it was originally written in English and, and so, and I wrote it in Johannesburg, so becauseI didn't have a job, right. So, so I applied to, to a, to a scholarship fellowship and I got it. I went to Wits University of Witwatersand, that's where I wrote the book.

And I would say I was, I was really kind of impressed by the, by the University of Witwatersand, especially the library. I mean, I didn't expect to find so many resources that would be useful for like writing a book on the Sahel down there in South Africa.

But yeah, and I did write that book in six months and so it came out and I think in the book you can see that I am kind of trying to tie up all these interests in, in political Islam, in democracy, with political economy, and also history, there is a lot of history there, which is one of my vocations, I think.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

But when I looked at it, it was like the history of development. The idea of development rising and then falling. That's what it was.

There was really an obsession about development, and there was an idea of what it is. And it was. It was based on progressivism.

And it was based on a kind of criticism of what I would call the African ancien regime. You know, like.

Like the French say ancien regime, right, is monarchy and religion, you know, and those things are defined as benightedness, superstition, all the things that are kind of holding you back and that you have to actually fight and in order to progress. So. And the code word for this kind of progressivism is emancipation. Emancipation from, you know, all those old things that are holding you back.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

What was not the case. So we had this, this debt crisis in the 1980s, and this is really where development died. And so I wanted to tell that story with regard to Niger.

And it is kind of focused on the state, right, because it's the state wanting to do this Development job and then failing to do it and becoming this now thing that is a bit useless, if I may say so. So I was working on that in Berlin. No, not in Berlin, in Germany.

Because I had this fellowship, the Humboldt Fellowship, when I was recruited by Leiden. So actually it was my move to Leiden that killed that project because I was working on it. I accumulated lots of archives.

But when I came here, I was a bit recruited on the sense that I was going to be the Islam and Sahel person. And so that was interesting to me because I was still working, working on this security crisis in the Sahel. So, okay, I did that.

But then I had to kind of shelf this book project. I still have all the materials, so maybe one day I will sit down and write it. But right now I'm writing a book. But it's not that book.

It's a book on the Songhai Empire. Yeah.

Gaddafi Abubakar

So going back to the olden days

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. And. And the song is also about state building. Because an empire is a state.

I see it the more I work on this, but this book is written in a kind of… It's not a university, it's not an academic. It's not academic book. It's more towards the general public.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I actually have a contract with Penguin Books for it. So it's. Okay. Highbrow, but still general public. Exactly.

Hendry Mang

It hybridizes history and….

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry mang

And does it discuss anything on contemporary politics, on how maybe you relate the Songhai Empire? Contemporary?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I think at the end. Yes, towards the end. But. But it's really a narrative history of the Songhai Empire, which is. Which is something that can be done. Because the Songha Empire, I think aside from Ethiopia, it is the ancient African state on which we have the most written material, dating from almost from the period and from shortly after the period. So you can actually write a narrative history of the Songhai Empire.

But the thing that I find interesting with the Songhai Empire is the time in which it existed, which is this end of the 15th century through the 16th century, which is this period of the birth of modernity. Right.

Henry Mang

So basically, while in Europe there was an emerging growth and desire for exploration.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Actually, it's more complicated than that. It's a bit of global history. Like, I'm looking at global history from the vantage of the Songhai in Paris. In fact, from the vantage of West Africa.

Henry Mang

And the emergence of Islam too?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, not really, because Islam was already there.

Henry Mang

In the 16th century.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, yeah. Islam was already there.

The theory behind it is that until the 16th, the 15th century, the 16th century, we have been living in a world that was not dominated by any region of the world. It was a horizontal world. I call it that. And it was a world that was kind of connected by trade mostly, not by imperialism. Exactly.

You did have empires, of course, because the world, if you look at it, the old world, it was made up of what they call population basins, areas, highly populated areas like China, India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, those four heavily populated areas. And it is always in these areas that the empires were born.

Like you have the Chinese empires of Gupta and other Mughal empire in China, all the Persian empires and, and whatnot in, in Mesopotamia and the Roman Empire. Because, yeah, you need, you need, you need lots of people to sustain an empire.

But, but then if you look at it, many of the people who created those empires were not coming from the population basin, but from the margins of it. Like, like the, the Mongol, who created, who created these empires in China and in India, the Arabs, who created this Islamic empire.

But they're coming from this. And the Ottoman to the Turkish, because they're coming from Central Asia. So this kind of very marginal place.

But anyway, so you have this system, this geoculture. I am using a concept by Immanuel Wallerstein. This geoculture that was animated by trade and that was kind of horizontal.

You did have places where there was more wealth.

Like China and India were really kind of the wealthy places of the world, and all the other people were kind of trying to get something from them. But that did not lead China and India to become these global empires.

And this all ended in the 16th century when this system that I call the trade meridian was replaced by a structure that was more vertical, you know, and that created a system of center and periphery which didn't exist before.

Henry Mang

Okay, so interestingly, you're arguing that in the case of China and India, for instance, there was a large horizontal spread of wealth and authority, I guess, relative to what happened eventually with the Roman Empire.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, no, this is not what I mean. The structure that is horizontal is the entire trade meridian, entire global system. Today the global system is vertical. We have a hegemony.

In the time of the trade meridian, you do not have any hegemonic domination of the whole system. So that's why I call it horizontal. It was really… No one is imposing. There was lot of exchange.

There were wars, of course, including wars of imperialism. Actually, the Songhai Empire was born from the imperialism of the Kingdom of Gao.

But you did not have this kind of system wide domination that we have from the 16th century with the west dominating the rest, and this kind of vertical type of domination that came from colonial empires. So you do not have that in the time of the trade meridian.

So the story of Songhai is interesting because it was born in the trade meridian and died in the Nui. The thing that I'm called the capitalist meridian. So it kind of died in the capitalist meridian.

And it was a bit killed by that capitalist meridian. Not directly by the main actors, but by Morocco. Morocco attacked the Songhai Empire at the end of the 16th century.

No, it was Morocco.

Henry Mang

Morocco is linked to Spain, I guess.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, it is linked to Spain.

And that is an important point because one of the reasons, actually the main reason why Morocco attacked Songhai empire was that they saw that Spain and Portugal had lots of gold and that this gold is coming from. From the Americas.

Actually, the king of Morocco even proposed to the Elizabeth the first, the Queen of England, an alliance so that the Moroccans and the English would plunder the colonies of the Spanish and the Portuguese. Didn't pan out, but at some point then he realized that there is gold on the other side of the Sahara.

So I can go and take that one and do many, many things with it, including challenging the Spaniards, challenging the Ottoman, because the Moroccan were not absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. So they wanted to protect their independence from it. And they were kind of Muslim also.

So we have to have this ideology where you kind of spend money with all those, you know, the Muslim brotherhoods, that kind of give you legitimacy. So whole kind of political objectives based on the idea that I'm going to take this gold from from the Songhai, a bad idea, because the gold was not produced in this in the Songha, it was just a transit.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

A transit region of it. But. But yeah, so they attacked. So for me, basically, Morocco attacked the Songhai Empire for the same reasons that Spain attacked the Americas.

So it is the same kind of colonialism, even though Morocco was not capitalist, even Spain was not that capitalist. But it is part of that history.

Henry Mang

Imperialism, more or less, and I think.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

It is part of capitalist imperialism. How capitalist imperialism came to be, this attack. And actually I described the attack of Morocco on Songhai as the first colonial expedition.

Henry Mang

Yeah. In the real sense of it. It introduces us to a different perspective.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

Basically, if Songhai. And just as you described, the era now from this.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Songhai was the 15th and 16th century.

Henry Mang

And 16th centuries, when all other empires and kingdoms had also emerged. And then there was the tendency by the 16th century towards a vertical, more imperialistic.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. From Europe.

Henry Mang

Yeah, from Europe. Morocco would just join the free.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

And just as you described, looking at Spain getting gold from the Americas.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

Morocco would also be interested in getting gold so that it will join in the international.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. That's. That it didn't work. But that's what.

Henry Mang

The emerging imperialist imperial economy that was actually growing by the 16th century.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

That's interesting, looking at all of these.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. And. Yeah.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Well, let's move a bit.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. Okay.

Gaddafi Abubakar

The issue of methodology.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yes.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Research and take us through briefly why.

You choose that methodological.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I don't have a methodology. I mean, it depends on.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Then take us through the methodology why you choose metabolic approach.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I don't have one methodology. It depends on the research that you do. Right, okay. Method has to be true. It has to be attuned. For instance, in terms of.

In terms of the history book, I have a very different method.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

From what I'm doing in terms of the security crisis in the Sahel. Okay, well, I didn't talk about that because you.

The last research agenda that I really focused on is the security. Security crisis in the Sahel. And, and. And that one has a different methodology, of course. And it has. It's a research agenda.

So it has multiple parts. And so it depends on how much.

Henry Mang

Has your passion for philosophy affected your writing?

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yes, we would like to know that.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yes. Well, I would say passion for philosophy and literature because they are kind of combined, both of them.

Well, I suppose it kind of helped me theorize, for instance, even the history book that I'm writing right now, of course, it's history. So I want people to be gripped by events and the narrative, but I also put lots of underlying theory in it.

That is coming from the philosophical education and philosophical curiosity. I sometimes do it by using also my knowledge of philosophers, of Arab and Muslim philosophers, like Ibn Khaldun.

I use Ibn Khaldun a lot to speak about the state in that time because he had a theory of the state.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And also the chapter that I'm writing right now in that book is an attempt to show that under the Mali Empire there was for the first time the emergence of a kind of bourgeoisie in West Africa. And that bourgeoisie was a kind of totally inspired by the bourgeoisie in the Dar Al Islam. Because the Dar Al Islam had a bourgeoisie.

And in fact the bourgeoisie in the Dar Al Islam is even the kind of central class. Because in the Dar Al Islam you didn't have a landed aristocracy like in Europe.

In Europe you had a land and aristocracy and then you have a bourgeoisie. And. And so the bourgeoisie had to look up to those counts of dukes and you know, whereas in.

In the duke Dar Al Islam, you did not have that.

Henry Mang

What you had in terms of egalitarian…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I don't know if it's equality, but you do have people whose standing in life depending on trade and notability. And this is what the bourgeoisie is all about. The bourgeoisie, of course, the bourgeois is the person who invests capital in order to… Exactly.

And the dominant, I wouldn't say the dominant, but the central class in the Dar Al Islam was those merchants and also the learned people. Because the bourgeoisie had also to do with, you know, those kind of scholarly pursuits, etc.

So that's what you had in the Dar Al Islam. And when the Islam started to seep into West Africa, this social model of the bourgeoisie then was kind of imported.

And it was imported in a context where merchants were in fact, a bit before Islam, they were a bit the odd ones out in the social structures of the Sudan. The Bilad al Sudan.

Henry Mang

Yeah.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Because in this world, basically what you had, you had aristocrats, actually, you had aristocrats. The hausa are called the Masarautun, but you have similar qadi in Songhai, you know, and then you have the. The Talaka.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And the slaves, etc. So you have this structure. And merchants did not really fit well in there. Usually they were.

Henry Mang

Because they were more itinerant.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Well, they were. Exactly. So they moved about. The system was based on. On landed estates.

Landed estates was a material base of the system, but their own kind of standing was not landed estate. It was wealth. It was like monied welth. Exactly.

Henry Mang

And the mobility of the wealth.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Exactly. So that's what their material. Material based was. And in fact, they were the ones who introduced currency in West Africa.

Because the system in West Africa was so much based on objects and land that they did not really need money. Money emerged only on marketplaces. So they do not need it for services.

Henry Mang

And also for. For daily necessities. Yeah, it was more exchange.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, it's exchange. And it's all exchange embedded in a social relations. So that the real currency was really social relations.

Henry Mang

So that's what markets were for.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, exactly. The real currency in the old system, in the old social system of the Sudan was you being a good person.

I mean it's, it's all those social skills.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yes, I have good relationship with Harry. Therefore I can go…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I can ask him this and that and I can give him thing I know that he will give me. He's a good person. So you have those social skills. Sometimes you're kind of described in terms of virtues even.

Henry Mang

There was basically no mobility, upward mobility. In many cases it was more horizontal because you could share.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

But so yeah, this is interesting, the mobility thing. So I kind of described the social system actually they were kind of two types.

One in the west of the Niger river and the other east of the Niger river, the Hausa one and the Mandé one, basically.

And for me the Mandae one is like a multi story building where you have the aristocrats on the top floor and then on the middle floor we have those people who… The word that I use for them is citizens because they're not aristocrat, but they're not also menial.

They have names in the local languages. The songhai, I call them borkiné. The Mandé called them Horon. I don't know if there is a word in Hausa for them, but. So you have those.

Gaddafi Abubakar

They are not Talaka.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Actually, they are, they are Talaka. When the regime become… Because the regime in which people live was not always a kingdom. Sometimes it was just a community, a village, etc.

In that, in that context, they're not Talaka at all. But the moment there is a king.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly. Then they become Talaka.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

The moment there is a state, we know a state system.

So you have those people and then you have the craftsmen and then you have the slaves who also are a bit like the odd ones out in the sense that many of them are really at the bottom of the system. But then you can also find some at the top of the system.

Henry Mang

They are quite influential because, yeah, you.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Can have vizier, you can have ministers, you can have generals who are slaves. So, so how do. Does one move in that system? And in the mandate type 1, women can move up by being concubines.

They can go, they can reach even to the top level. And men, the Horon can move up the Horon and borkiné by marrying into the aristocracy.

They can do that because this floor boundary between the aristocracy and the borkiné citizen is a bit porous. But they cannot move down into. No, the craftsmen cannot move up into the other floors at all. So you have that.

The Tuareg have that same system, the Fulani also, but the Hausa, I see them more as. Not as vertical, but as a horizontal, but with an inner and outer room. So. Yeah, because at the center room you have the Masusarata.

And then because here you don't have this. Your rights being based on you being born in a certain status.

Because in the, in the, in the, in the floor system, you are born in a certain type of status. Like you're born a craftsman. You cannot be something.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Whereas in the Indian cases, it's almost like that. Yeah.

Henry Mang

It had to do with the economic advantage that you had found yourself. Okay, so if you, if, if your father was a craftsman, a blacksmith, for example.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

And griot are part of that too.

Henry Mang

Yes, yes. You became a family… uh…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

It looks like a caste in the sense that you have endogamy, in the sense that, you know, the marriage you have to. But, but one. But you're right also because the reason for that is that you're being trained. The skills that you have, you have to inherit it.

It's a matter of inheritance. And those are important skills. Skills. Because skilled labor basically was produced in the caste system.

And so you need that for manufacture for any number of things. But in the, in the Hausa system, the skilled labor is organized in sana'o'i, so they like corporations.

So you know, it's not like this status based system, so which kind of also makes the whole thing a bit. Operate a bit differently. But still it is also one, a system where you have people with power and people with less power.

So that also existed. And, and in both system the merchants are just not included.

Henry Mang

Yeah, but I think it still brings us back to the, to the, the concept of the fact that they would always. They had a fluidity that others didn't have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You had the craftsmen who had inherited legacies, while the merchants could trade anything. So today the merchant is able to sell gold, tomorrow he sells grains and he has that latitude.

I remember when I was doing my PhD, the issue of trade in the central areas of Nigeria, where I come from, the idea was traders were very few. And you were assumed to… It was assumed that you had magical powers for you to move from one community to another.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

So. And that was when?

Henry Mang

Yeah, in. Most especially in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Wow. Okay.

Henry Mang

So they were called, in my ethnic group, they were called […]. They were the only people that had some knowledge of counting.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

Yes. So they, they had some form of which they calculated and they were seen as a supernatural power. More or less.

They might have been intellectually very, very intelligent.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, it's. It's just their skills.

Henry Mang

Yes.

And they were the one that people feared and they had that liberty of moving from one community or the other without being harassed or being attacked by others. You could see that with the merchants.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, no, no, no. It's. It's exactly how I describe it in the book these things. It's exactly how I describe it.

But my point, the point that I was making about the merchant is that because they're kind of this… They do not have a stable place in society. That also made them more open to absorbing this Islamic culture.

And also for other reasons, of course, because Islam also brought institutions that were really favorable to trade. You have the notaries, the judges, the Amarat, and have also the contract system, because trade is based on contract, which is not the case with normal social relations. So they started to imbibe this social culture of Islam.

But it is only under the conditions created by the Mali empire that this led them to become like a bourgeoisie, a bit like what existed in the Dar Al Islam.

Henry Mang

So. Sorry, can we go into. Well, because the discourse goes into also the discussions on academia and your experiences as an academic.

I mean, you had noted initially that when you move back to Nigeria after your studies in the United States, you had problems with the university. They are trying to build a political science department. What was it like?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Well, there is someone with power in the system who didn't, like my... I don't even know. I don't think the problem is… The universities have power systems embedded in them.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Hidden usually.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So if you come with certain resources, certain ideas, you're perceived as a threat by some people.

And especially the people who have become more powerful. Usually they have become more powerful because. Because they have this skill of politics that allow them to also dominate other people. So no one is going to really help you also move, move things forward. And I think also, I don't know, there is a big critique to be made about university scholars in Africa in general.

It's better not go there because it will be long…

Henry Mang

You seem to be quite passionate when you talked about the library in Witwatersand. What do you think differentiates maybe West African scholarship and what you saw in South Africa?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, I don't know if I saw a lot of difference.

I think the University of Witwatersrand is a special place because it is one of those universities that were built for, you know, South Africa used to be like a Western country and Wits was part of this Western system. So it had, you know, it had all those huge resources that came from its history. It's a Western university, you know, so.

So actually it reminded me a lot of the universities I was in the US it was even organized like an American university. The library system, everything was very, very American.

I felt very at ease there because I had this background of being trained in the US, but I know that other universities, especially the new ones that have been created, created for the African population, they have much less resources. They are much more on shaky grounds. And I think there too, you have the problems that you see elsewhere in Africa.

You do see them in those places as well.

Gaddafi Abubakar

What are the most pressing security challenges now in the Sahel region?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

I think the pressing security challenge is the fact that the juntas in the Sahel are not capable of ending the security crisis. And I don't even think they're interested in doing so.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Are they benefiting from the institute?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

It's not that they're benefiting.

I guess objectively maybe they are, because so long as you have the security crisis, you can still say that you need to be there in order to fight it. Even though they came to power by saying that the civilians are not fighting it well.

So there is a bit of paradox there, but I don't think they have a plan. They don't have a good plan. That's what I mean. They don't have a good plan.

And my impression is that they cannot have a good plan because having a good plan would entail doing things that they would see as against their power. And. And yeah, because having a good plan means that you have to do a lot of reforms.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Okay. And they are not ready for the reform?

Henry Mang

There seems to be a misconception then, most especially within the larger African, West African populace, that because democracy doesn't seem to in quote, work, these juntas might give new perspectives or new purpose.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

And this is because this is growing. Just recently, last week, when been in the attempted coup, a lot of commentaries on social media seem to say, wow, why?

Like, for instance, a lot of Nigerians would say, why wasn’t it Nigeria?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Wow.

Henry Mang

A lot of people are disenchanted with democracy or what they see as the failure of democracy. And why is that? Why does that seem to be a growing tendency? Because well, for us, the commentary is very, very…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, I know what you mean. I know. I mean, there is. There is a current of opinion that is. That is authoritarian, basically.

I think it's not just that democracy is failing, it's just that they don't like democracy. There are areas where democracy is working, but they're not looking at those areas.

In my culture, they say that when the hyena wants to eat her daughter, she says, oh, you smell like goat. And also a goat is something that the hyena will eat. Exactly. So I think there's just this idea you have in Africa.

Many, many people who don't like democracy. That's just what it is. They don't like democracy. They have this authoritarian mentality.

This is a reality not just in Africa, but in many places in the world. But in Africa, they tend to be the more vocal and maybe dominant opinion. I don't know.

In part because the defenders of democracy are less organized or vocal. That might be one of the reasons. So you have that opinion. And also that opinion is connected to the people who identify democracy with the Western domination, imperialism, et cetera, and have this idea of the west as inherently imperialistic.

And so getting rid of democracy also goes along with breaking with the west and asserting sovereignty, because sovereignty can be acquired only against the west. Not, for instance, against China or against Russia, but only against the West.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Why this resentment against the West?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, I think it's something that comes from our intellectual history. Of course, it comes from the history that we have with Western countries of colonialism, etc.

Henry Mang

I saw my students reading and quoting Walter Rodney.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

In these contemporary times.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Exactly, Fanon, Frantz Fanon.

Henry Mang

Very dangerous.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, exactly. Who would probably think things very differently today. Yes. I think there has not been any renewal of thought in Africa as things change and evolve. So people are kind of stuck in the past. They have made of those intellectuals of the 1960s.

They have turned them into prophets and the whole intellectual enterprise has become a kind of cult or religion. So that's what you see.

Now these people are kind of a lot of them in Africa, but they have not formed political parties to participate in the political process of democracy and take power.

I think the only exception is in Senegal where you do have one of those sovereignties party, as they call them, in the francophone, in the francophone sphere, des souverainistes. So only in Senegal did that happen. But of course this feeling exists everywhere.

And the conditions made it so that in the countries of the Sahel, they came to power through coup d' état. So instead of the ballots as in Senegal, they came to power through bullets in the Sahel. But in the end, it's a party.

It's a party, it's a sovereignist party. The only thing is that in the Sahel they did not come to power democratically, they came to power by force.

And that makes the situation in the Sahel a bit more complicated than in Senegal. Well, Senegal is part of the Sahel, but it's a coastal Sahel. Yeah, it has its own traditions and history, etc.

But the central Sahel, Mali, Niger, Burkina, that's what has happened to them. So now you have these sovereigntists dictatorships basically.

And so they have this self presentation of them being liberators of some African nations, while in fact oppressing.

Henry Mang

Is there a correlation, for instance between these emerging dictatorships and the Islamists or Islamism in West Africa?

Because the excuses, most especially in Mali, is that the coups and all of these dictatorships are emerging because of the need to suppress these Islamists.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Not the Islamist, but the jihadists, because they're kind of close to the Islamists. If you look at the situation in all three countries, the Islamist leaders, Salafi in particular, have backed the dictatorships because they don't like democracy. If you look at African societies, you can actually locate where those anti democratic authoritarian types are located.

You have all the highly religious conservatives, be they Christian or Muslim, and then you see, especially Christian, it would be on the kind of Protestant side. And then you have just identity conservatives, those Pan African conservatives.

If you look at what the discourse of the Junta’s, it's never about the poor people, you know, or improving the social conditions, infrastructure. Yeah, pretending that we are becoming like China or something like that. It's pandering to the elite.

And also they attack, they attack sexual minorities, for instance, you know, all criminalized homosexuality, things like that.

Henry Mang

But then these traditional chiefs, in many cases, they are invented chiefs.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Henry Mang

So if you have these invented traditions and chiefs.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

And then they are being supported by the juntas and also by these groups. How does Africa, especially West Africa... How do we see West Africa in the next maybe 10, 20 years?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

What is the connection with the traditional chiefs?

Henry Mang

Well, the traditional chiefs seem to be. Well, to be, you know, joining in the conservative frame.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Oh, yeah. But I mean, the traditional chiefs have always been conservative. They were. Even though they're kind of… You say they are invented, but they're invented based on ideas and... Even the ones before were invented at some point. And the thing is, people kind of, in the end, people adhere to that.

They forgot that they were invented. So they see them as timeless authorities, natural authorities.

But still, it kind of claimed to rule through the masses, and therefore it was actually against the chiefs. They used the chiefs for political reasons, etc. But the idea was that at some point these people will be thrown into dustbin of history.

So military dictatorship in the Sahel always goes hand in hand with those conservative forces because they rely on them. If you don't have a political party, you need those people. So this is what is happening there.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Do you think external actors Like France, the United States…

Abdourahamane Idrissa

What?

Gaddafi Abubakar

External actors. External actors.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

What about them?

Gaddafi Abubakar

Do you think that they have a role to play in security challenges facing the Sahel?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Well, they. They no longer really have a role. They did have a role. Right. I mean, but the Junta’s do not like to work with them, especially with the French.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah, but in your own opinion, do you think they're relevant? They can help solve the problem.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

How can they? I mean, you have to have foot on the ground and, and there's nothing they can do now because basically the regimes in the Sahel, they are isolationists. They don't want to work with anyone. Not just, not just the French.

Gaddafi Abubakar

And they can't do it themselves?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

No, they can't. They can't.

Henry Mang

So what is your view with ECOWAS?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, ECOWAS is problematic. Well, in the fact that they don't have an approach.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah. That's the problem with ecowas. They don't have a cohesion that would lead to an approach. There's no, like, leadership that kind of define…

Because if ECOWAS wanted to finish with the Junta’s, they could finish with them.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Okay.

Gaddafi Abubakar

By using the… comment?

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Not necessarily. To force the. The three countries in the Sahel, they're landlocked.

Henry Mang

They're landlocked.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

They're extremely dependent on the neighboring countries. And in fact, they are the most integrated economies of West Africa because of their dependence.

The countries of the Sahel are the only ones that export… If you look at the three pillars of the economy, labor, capital, and land, which means resources.

They export labor in the Gulf of Guinea: Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'. Ivoire. If you combine the total diaspora population of Niger, Mali, Burkina, in Cote d', Ivoire, they will dwarf the native Ivorian population.

So they really export labor there. The capital formation in the Sahel is based on import export. So completely dependent on the ports of the Gulf of Guinea and resources that they have.

They don't produce anything, so they just export minerals. But to export them also, they need to go through those ports of the Gulf of Guinea.

Normally their economic strength is in the production of certain agricultural goods or even cattle and sheep and onions and stuff like that.

And in fact, to make the most of those things, they need to integrate them into value chains that would allow them to access better the West African market because they cannot export those things outside of West Africa. So they're really, really very dependent. So ECOWAS, if it was a real bloc, had the means to dictate.

Of course, the problem is that the Junta’s don't care about the population.

So if ECOWAS decides to dictate to say, if you don't relent, we are going to suspend this freedom of circulation, you know, and in fact, ECOWAS is entitled to do it because they have decided that the countries are no longer part of ecowas, then the population who actually do not live by the economies of Niger and Mali and, and Burkina, but to regional economy. In fact, those countries do not have national economies, their economies. The real economy is regional, within the region.

And in the sense that most people actually live off of the region, not off of the official economy, then you will have a revolt. This is only the…

Gaddafi Abubakar

The suffering would be too much.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah, so that's so. So for instance, me. My advice to ECOWAS, was not to do that.

Because if you do that, the suffering would be a lot and maybe there will be a trauma that can last for decades. You know, you have to look at the future.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

So maybe don't do that, but allow them to circulate, but let them know that it is a gift from ECOWAS.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yeah.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

You know, and. And that has to be organized in a certain way.

So maybe you have kind of this special card that is for those countries, you know, because you're not part of ECOWAS, but we are kind of allowing you to. It has to sink into the minds of the people and then target the official economy of the countries, the ones on which the Junta’s depend.

Like this export of minerals and stuff like that. Exactly. Because the Junta’s, so long as they have the. This control over the official economy, they don't care about the people.

It's not very different from the… actually from the previous regimes, you know, but they have made it even more evident. And, and that's where ECOWAS should have struck.

But in order to do this, you need to be highly organized and cohesive as a bloc, which is not the case because you have people who do not have any idea. Nigerians do not understand how francophone countries work.

And, and then you have someone like the president of Togo who is actually always helping the Junta’s against ECOWAS while being within ECOWAS. So. And no one is doing anything about that.

Henry Mang

I think there's always this emphasis more, especially with ECOWAS and the EU, about sovereignty, about the choice of countries to decide who their friends are.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

But so you remember when I say that I. To me, it's the state's world obstacle.

Gaddafi Abubakar

Yes, exactly.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

So because. Because the states decide, because we are sovereign, we can do whatever we want. No, if you, if you are working together, you cannot do whatever you want. You have to sacrifice parts of your sovereignty. But they don't want to do it still.

Henry Mang

Still, we have a full circle now when we come back to the state.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Yeah.

Henry Mang

And so it. It means that basically you have a lot of work to do ahead of you.

In terms of trying to determine how the state is because that was where you started from.

Abdourahamane Idrissa

Actually, yes, I have, I have to come back to that. In January, I'm going to the to Sharjah in the Emirates because I teach there as well.

I teach for five months in newly created institution called the Africa Institute and I will be teaching a course on the state.

And I told the director of the institute here I would like to teach a course on the state because I hate the state and it's a good way to understand why if you teach it. But my real objective is to use that course to build foundations for a book length essay on on the state.

And I will with a lot of focus on Africa, but it will be the state as such, not the African state.

David Ehrhardt

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Africa Knows.

New episodes are on the way, so stay tuned via our instagram page @AfricaknowsPodcast and follow us on Spotify, Apple, Podcast or most other platforms. For any comments, questions or ideas. Feel free to reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time.