Authors: Oluwaseun. M. Adesina
Abstract: Race and ethnicity remain among the most powerful forces shaping political authority, social hierarchy, and patterns of inclusion and exclusion across Africa. While race is often framed as a colonial imposition and ethnicity as an indigenous cultural identity, this distinction obscures their shared function as socially constructed ontological categories embedded in relations of power. This article advances a comprehensive philosophical and comparative analysis of race and ethnicity in Africa, integrating social ontology, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and African normative philosophy. Drawing on case studies from Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Ghana, and South Africa, the paper demonstrates how identity categories are historically produced, institutionally embedded, and ethically consequential. It develops a conceptual model linking power, ontology, and injustice, and argues that meaningful justice and transformation in Africa require not only institutional reform but ontological reconstruction grounded in recognition, relationality, and shared humanity.
