When Edmond Keller began studying the politics of Africa in the 1960s, the question of national political integration, he recalls, was the most fundamental issue facing scholars and policymakers (ix). Some 50 years later, he reckons, it still is. This book is an attempt, at the sunset of Keller’s professional career, to gather the insights of decades of fieldwork, teaching, and scholarship on the continent and to tackle the reasons for this enduring failure.

As the title suggests, it is in citizenship, and deficits thereof, that the author seeks the key to the African national integration conundrum. The first part of the book reviews the scholarship on citizenship in Africa (Chapters 1 and 2) and presents Keller’s methodological framework (Chapter 3). The second part offers case study narratives on Nigeria, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Rwanda (Chapters 4 to 8) before concluding.

Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict in Africa reads more like the intellectual ruminations of a veteran observer of African politics than a new theoretical contribution on this already well-trodden topic. In many ways—and this is an endearing feature of the work—Keller writes for himself, trying to come to terms with the as-yet unfulfilled promise of citizenship in Africa. Yet he does so in a very accessible and inviting style and one feels welcome along for the journey.

If the book has a weakness it is in the lack of a well-articulated original, theoretical framework. In the first two chapters, Keller cogently discusses some of the scholarship on citizenship in Africa and its relationship to conflicts of national integration, but he does not push it further. Steven Ndegwa’s useful notion of “civic republican citizenship” (“Citizenship and Ethnicity: An Examination of Two Transitional Moments in Kenyan Politics,” American Political Science Review 91 [1997]: 599–616)—a form of customary group membership that contrasts with the liberal idea of universal and equal citizenship—features prominently in Keller’s review (pp. 25–26). Such ethnic citizenship, Keller suggests, undergirds so-called autochthonous group claims over land and undermines thereby the substance of citizenship for other groups, which understandably fight back (Chapter 2).

Yet the tragedy is that liberal citizenship in Africa is cast in the yoke of the colonial legacy, while its alternative—ethnic citizenship—is collective and can be exclusionary. What the book does not make clear is what prompts such bouts of exclusionary behavior by some groups or by African states themselves, and why these happen in some countries and not in others. In this respect, the selection of case studies, all of which are about states that have recently grappled with citizenship discrimination and subsequent conflict, does not provide enlightenment.

Paradoxically, however, it is in these very case studies, despite their biased selection, that the strength of the book resides. Although country experts or seasoned Africanists will find little that is new in these chapters, Keller weaves together knowledgeable and highly readable narratives that illuminate by their commonalities. Thus, the reader discovers the pervasiveness and consistency across Africa of communal claims to autochthony—a form of localized citizenship that supports group demands for preferential access to resources, their connection to land policies, the subsequent short shrift made of other groups’ citizenship rights, and the extent to which such exclusions promote conflict. Nigeria or Côte d’Ivoire do not come as surprises, but to see that Kenya is fundamentally saddled with the same plight is eye-opening indeed.

For each one of his case studies, Keller goes back through history, identifying processes, agencies, institutions, actors, and critical moments that contribute to the weakening of citizenship—despite universal legal guarantees—and promote conflict and lack of national integration. It is here that his considerable experience and knowledge shine through. In this respect, the chapter on Ethiopia, his specialty of many years, deserves special mention. It is not clear in the book whether he did fieldwork in the other locations, but his field experience in Ethiopia comes out very clearly through these pages and significantly enriches this case study.

The final chapter wavers between wrap-up analysis and normative aspirations. Keller discusses the role that political will, better governance, and genuine rule of law can play in addressing unequal citizenship. There is little doubt that all of them would be in the interest of democratic state formation. Whether they could be in the interest of most African rulers or of the interest groups behind exclusionary policies is more debatable. And one wonders whether a young scholar launching an Africanist career today might be confronted with the same questions 40 years from now.

Altogether, this book offers a fine survey of the essential question of citizenship in Africa, one that will be of particular value to those without prior exposure to the scholarship on the topic. It is also a fitting testimony to a rich academic career.