ABSTRACT
In recent decades, African governments have intensified social/ethnic integration efforts through constitutional reforms and drafted and adopted local and transnational policy guidelines and structures. Together, these should enhance equal political representation and ethnic diversity in the public service for all-inclusive governance processes. Based on multicultural perspectives, this chapter explores multicultural public policies to explain why inter-ethnic conflicts and loose state-society relations persist despite implementing these policies in Africa. Cameroon and Nigeria are used to demonstrate how underlying intricacies in the implementation of multicultural policies reside in a complex mix of socio-political, economic and historical variables of governance in Africa. We conclude by highlighting a few policy recommendations for strengthening multicultural policies and structures.
