ABSTRACT
One major consequence o f European imperialism in Africa was its disruption of in digenous political practices in African communities. European imperialism followed in the footsteps of Arab imperialism in certain large segments of Africa that historians now call the Sudan. Under such Arab and European imperialism, new and different structures and processes were created within the last five centuries of African history. These new realities challenged old modes of native political thought as many aspects of indigenous ideology became invalid and untenable in the changed circumstances of subjugation to alien Arab and European political authorities. Conceptualization of these new political structures and processes in a normative language of political thought was not always as ready-made as the practices that they sought to translate into an intellectual format. Consequently, there have been large areas of gaps as well as lags between thought and practice, especially in the new world of European colonialism and its aftermath in the post-colonial states of Africa.
