Scholarly attention to African statehood has changed radically over the past two decades. From the institutional determinism of state-building has emerged a literature immersed in historically specific practices of managing power relationships and manipulating political space. Reflecting on this shift, Stephen Ellis cogently takes stock of the present juncture facing both the continent and the academy. Season of Rains situates ‘Africa in the world’ and maps a shrewd course for Western engagement with its challenges.
Writing for an audience at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ellis's immediate concern is to link current development practice to the colonial project that bore it. He argues that the West continues to view Africans as lingering outside time, unable to find a place in the modern world. Drawn into his critique are shortcomings in the prevailing sovereignty regime, the follies of Afro-optimism and -pessimism, and the persistent Victorian conceptualisation of history as social progress. Thoroughly refuting such hypotheses, Ellis moves on to challenging widely held assumptions that pollute Western conceptions of African agency. Remarking on the continent's putative irrelevance, Ellis emphasises changing forms of insertion in the global political economy, and notes Africa's growing importance in matters of religion, resource scarcity and global criminality. Against the ‘tribal animosity’ tropes still lingering in Western media accounts, Ellis argues that urbanisation and the constant reinterpretation of ethnicity portend deep shifts in the political demography of coming years. Where it is assumed that Africans are universally poor, he contends that they are finding opportunities in the financial crisis to push back on global patron–client relationships, citing growing markets for securities and an ascendant middle class. The sum effect is a provocative re-evaluation of Africa's past and present trajectory.
Among the study's few faults is the unfortunate tendency to revisit thematic or historical arguments in numerous passages, sometimes at varying lengths and with only tangential relevance to the topic at hand. While such repetition is unavoidable for a wide-ranging analysis, Season of Rains would have benefited from adherence to a clearer structure. Moreover, Ellis's profusion of case studies falls short of cumulatively demonstrating his theses. Two paragraphs on Kenya's transition at independence to a one-party state are insufficient to establish the manufacture of political identities (p. 100), while passing remarks on Zimbabwean and Congolese leaders' condemnation of veiled threats to African independence do not fully illustrate evolving notions of sovereignty (pp. 142–4). Additionally, underneath this wealth of vignettes remain substantial geographic blind spots: Tanzania and Botswana garner few mentions, island-states fare no better, and much of West Africa simply goes unnoticed. This oversight undermines the study's generalised conclusions. Ellis might have narrowed his broad observations and opted for fewer, more effective, case studies to support them.
Notwithstanding such quibbles, this work is powerful, nuanced and engaging. Its judicious treatment of state formation consolidates recent scholarly advances, and provides a blueprint for future study of modernity and development in Africa. A terse drawing-together of on-going social, economic and political change, Season of Rains is an exhortation for fresh thinking from which all readers will benefit.
