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The article examines the role of education in nation-building in postcolonial Africa. The postcolonial African nationalist leaders faced formidable challenges in building new nations out of disparate ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic groups, particularly as regards the two intimately related processes of deconstruction and construction. While deconstruction entailed dismantling the structures, institutions, and power relations of the colonial period, construction entailed replacing them with relevant national institutions, structures, authorities, and mechanisms. Education was to advance the process of construction and transformation as a pedagogical instrument for cultivating a national identity by fostering integration and cohesion. One of the nationalist leaders' biggest mistakes, however, was to adopt a homogenizing strategy of nation-building. The paper subscribes to the conception of heterogeneity as a nation-building strategy, where ethnic and civic (sub-national and national) layers constitute the nation. The overall focus of the article is a conceptual and theoretical analysis of the nexus between education and nation-building in postcolonial Africa. The central argument is that education plays a decisive role in nation-building in Africa. Eritrea is selected as an empirical case study to advance this argument.

Th e article analyzes the discourse of politics of language in Eritrea. It argues that the language debate in Eritrea over equality of languages and bilingual offi cial language policy is more about power relations than about language per se. It relates to politics of identity that derive from the construction of two identity formations as understood by political elites. Equality of languages is based on ethnic identity, whereas offi cial language is based on the construction of supra-ethnic civic identity. According to the constructivist bilingual offi cial language Arabic and Tigrinya are supposed to represent two diff erent socio-cultural identity formations, notably, Islamic-Arabic and Christian-Tigrinya. Consequently, the offi cial language policy debate could be construed to derive from politics of power relation where two groups of elites supposedly representing the two identity formations are engaged in power competition refl ecting real or imaginary socio-cultural cleavage of respective identity. In this sense the bilingual offi cial language is designed to create social equilibrium wherein it is supposed that power would equitably be distributed between two rival elite groups.

The article seeks to analyse the ethic and civic forms of citizenship and identity in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia and to some extent Sudan are pursuing the ethnic model. While Eritrea and Djibouti pursue the civic model, Somalia represents a special case. Ethnic citizenship may guarantee equal rights, self-rule, and selffulfilment; however, it could also be a cause of division and irredentism. Civic citizenship could create unity and cohesion in polyethnic societies; it could also lead to majority domination. The article contends that both models are relevant where the national level could be served by the civic model and the sub-national is served by the ethnic model. The article concludes that the politics of domination are the main obstacle to the equal rights of citizens, and therefore politics of domination should be replaced by the politics of rights.

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