Introduction THE nineteenth-century model of the nation-state, steampowered, armour-plated, culturally homogeneous and monoglot, is today said to be in crisis. In the twentieth century, and in the northern world, it was still a ghostly imagination of moral community for which to die, for whose governance to vote and pay one's tax. Today many have seen it as a redundant, potentially spiteful, middleman, caught between opposing forces without and within. From without, global capitalist corporations demand to cut their local, social, costs - those welfare services and workers’ rights that many electorates still expect their states to defend. From within, the divisive politics of identity has arisen to articulate resentment of such brute market forces and the inability of nation-states to soften them. National politics can thus seem to be increasingly devoid of a public sphere, an argued sense of the common good - and governments powerless to better the lives of citizens. For a state to protect its people against hard bargains, dressed up as market disciplines, is to risk investors seeking easier profits elsewhere. On the other hand, without effective states nations can soon fall apart, with more local loyalties gripping each other by the throat. Yugoslavia is but one example.

Before 11 September 2001 many commentators thought the demise of the nation-state might be something to be desired. Regional confederation might better match market power and social responsibility. Since then, more would say that competent nation-states - not merely well policed but also attentive to citizens - remain essential supports for an international, rather than a global, borderless, order. Both before and after c9/l 1’ African states have been analyzed more critically than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Before that date it was agreed that they were in a worse pickle than most. The continent had seen little of the steam-powered, parade-ground, or schoolroom state-building that had created nation-states in the northern world.