ABSTRACT
As aspects of identity, citizenship and subjectivity are issues of increasingly varied interpretation in contemporary society, not least among academic and governing circles in the postcolonial world. Citizenship and subjectivity, while traditionally associated with state formation, are intimately related to other aspects of identity, particularly nationalism, ethnicity, culture and race. In the communitarian version of citizenship, it is participation and group identity which is recognised and emphasised. G. Delanty claims that these take precedence over rights and duties although in the case of most African groups, rights and duties are part of citizenship but not in the western state sense. The African experience to date has produced a post-coloniality that indelibly imbues contemporary conceptions of identity such as citizenship and subjectivity. Moommen claims that it is not possible to articulate citizenship without a state or nation-state as the arbiter of context and content, asserting that any attempt to define citizenship without the state as foundation is meaningless and empty.
