ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to some of the issues from the processes of invention and imagination in the colonial period to the negotiation and renegotiation of ethnic identities and political salience of ethnic identities in contemporary contexts. In contemporary Africa, the two most common examples of ethnic branding or positioning are assertions of autochthony and indigeneity, which are similar and sometimes overlap, but are subtly different. Political action across sub-Saharan Africa is informed by many factors, including divisions other than ethnicity, pertinent issues, personal characteristics, and perceptions of likely outcomes. Everyday experiences of nepotism, ethnic bias, and corruption produce a vicious circle that reinforces 'reliance on the ethnic solidarity and patronclient networks that dominate bureaucratic processes in post-colonial African states'. The construction, negotiation, and politicization of ethnicity are thus instrumental in motivation and opportunistic in character, but simultaneously rooted in linguistic, cultural, and ethnographic similarities, and communal experiences of marginalization, neglect, injustice, and achievement.
