Although historians know very little with certainty about much of the ancient history of Africa, scholars are nevertheless unanimous on the fact that the “tribes” could have existed since time immemorial. Today, there are around 3,000 tribes in Africa, speaking more than 2,000 different languages. However, Professor Emeritus Donald Wright, a subscriber to this mailing list, in his excellent article, What Do You Mean, “There Were No Tribes in Africa?” also argued that ethnicity, as we know it today, did not exist in pre-colonial Africa. Wright (1999) warned of the futility and meaninglessness of interpreting ethnicity in precolonial African societies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The use of the term “tribe” – in these modern times – does not correspond to what our identities are. Ethnicity in Africa in general, and The Gambia in particular, has always been a fluid and very loose entity. Wright (1999) recalled, for example, that the ruling family of Niumi in Gambia absorbed into their (ethnic) group anyone who was willing to accept their authority and adapt to the customs and beliefs practiced by them, and not just any who born. in them. If I read Wright (1999) correctly, during the period in question, one could, for example, "become" a Mandinka and adopt it as an identity, by simply speaking the language (Mandingo) and doing proof of loyalty and allegiance to power. Niumi's family. We are still learning (and growing to know more) about the fascinating history of ancient Africa; and in fact, much of what we know about this period, including the different African cultures predominant at the time, comes primarily from the oral tradition of storytelling. Of course, over the centuries, and thanks to the tradition of oral storytelling, some of these stories have been transmitted orally to humanity. Often referred to as Griots, in our own context, these oral storytellers or oral communicators, much like a historian, have had a sacred duty and obligation to remember, preserve and share our rich history and cultures. And from the accounts of oral communicators, who had to preserve the stories of their people for generations by passing them down in the form of stories and songs, it is evident that there were several "tribes" or ancient civilizations of Africa. History teaches us that ancient African civilizations included tribes and cultures, for example those of the kingdoms of Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kush, Aksum and ancient Egypt. And each of these kingdoms had a different culture from the others. Yet among scholars today, there is near unanimity that precolonial African identities were, to some extent, vague, fluid, and complex. Therefore, when it comes to the issue of ethnicity, the problem is larger than it seems. This might be a bit simplistic on my part, given that there are disagreements between or among primordialist, instrumentalist, and constructivist schools of thought about the origin and nature of ethnic identities. But overall, there are two theoretical discussions/arguments about African “ethnicity”. The first school of thought holds that ethnicity is a colonial construct, created by the interaction between colonial anthropologists, early ethnographers, administrators, European Christian missionaries, and their "colonial subjects." However, the second school of thought holds that ethnicity actually predates colonialism inAfrica and that traces of ethnicity can be found in pre-colonial African societies. Therefore, while one school argues that ethnicity was a colonialist construct, the other argues that it was a local construct and predated colonialism. The term "tribe" itself originated in ancient Rome, but was later used to give a description. and story of the different cultures experienced by the West through European exploration. It was initially a popular word used by anthropologists in particular, but in the mid-19th century, scholars began to disuse the phrase and later replaced it as an anthropological term with another phrase "ethnic groups" around the 20th century. The word "tribe" was dismissed by many scholars on the grounds that it was difficult to define and was, in the African context, a derogatory or derogatory term. “Ethnic group,” defined, among other things, as a group of people with common ancestry and language, shared cultural and historical tradition, is the most widely used term today. What we can infer from the literature on ethnicity in Africa is that before the advent of Western colonization, Africans did not simply categorize or identify themselves entirely according to their ethnicity. In fact, there is ample evidence that modern African ethnic identities were constructed or invented during the period. colonial period. In fact, the concept of tribes was more of a colonial construction or creation. As a concept, it was an integral part of how British colonialists would govern colonial Africa; and this was brought about for two main reasons. First, Europe had both a social hierarchical structure and a social class system, and because of these classifications in Western societies and their sense of cultural purity or superiority, the colonialists, from their point of view of view, wanted to transplant these divisions of European nations. on the map of Africa. As European colonialists and explorers began to explore and discover Africa, they began to know and understand the different forms of societies and cultures with which they came into contact. Colonialists had categorized Africans into discernible groups and fostered among these groups a renewed sense of social and economic, as well as political, rivalries based on ethnic lines. Today, instead of trying to understand and accept the diversity, fluidity and multifaceted nature of the circumstances prevailing at the time, the colonial masters felt that it was simpler and simpler to simply classify our people into categories or groups based solely on perceived differences. and ethnic divisions. Second, the colonial authorities also decided that placing our people, known to have differences, into “tribes” with “chiefs” would be an effective and lasting way to create political order in the colonies. Thus, the partition of Africa, especially the inappropriate demarcation of our porous borders, were arbitrary acts that the European colonialists had imposed without taking into account our local conditions and realities, thus creating, naturally, a postcolonial separatist problem in some regions of Africa. The secessionist conflict in Casamance, Senegal, comes immediately to mind. Unfortunately, Europe's arbitrary postcolonial borders have left Africans herded or sardined into countries that do not even reflect or represent their cultural heritage andreligious beliefs, a paradox that has left unsolvable problems in Africa today. For example, Christian South Sudan was ceded to Muslim North Sudan. The demarcation of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria has also created disputes between the two countries. Before independence, West Cameroon, under a British protectorate, was partly administered by Nigeria until 1961, when it gained independence by joining the Republic of Cameroon, which had already achieved independence. Today, English-speaking groups in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon, notably those in the town of Bamenda, are calling for secession from the rest of Cameroon, which is French-speaking. In short, the colonialists viewed colonial Africa as a source of wealth and natural resources and, therefore, manipulated and exploited the demarcation of Africa's arbitrary borders, in accordance with colonial subjugation at the Berlin Conference of 1884.– 85. In the context of The Gambia, British colonialism fostered and developed parochial attitudes and tribalism and placed residents of the colonial territory in conflict or competition with the protectorate, leading to antagonism between the Party United (UP) and the PPP; resentment between the educated and the illiterate; and envy between Muslims and Christians. You see, until independence, colonial Gambia, for administrative purposes, was divided into “Colony” and “Protectorate”. The colony was made up of the capital (Bathurst) and its surroundings (Kombo St Mary), while the “protectorate” was made up of the rest of Gambian territory – the rural areas more precisely. The name of the capital was changed from Bathurst to Banjul in 1973. Residents of the "colony" were called British subjects and those in the "protectorate" or rural areas were called British Protectorate People. This meant that residents of the colony enjoyed political, educational, and legal privileges, while rural people were denied these rights and privileges. Thus, the creation (and perpetuation) of colony-protectorate antagonism in colonial and postcolonial Gambia can be attributed, to a very large extent, to the British imperial policy of divide and rule strategy. The colonial policy of divide and rule, as mentioned above, not only created differences between urban and rural populations, but it also fomented animosities between them. In fact, immediately after independence in 1965, the British strategy of divide and rule tested the social cohesion and harmony of the country, but Sir Dawda Jawara was a pragmatist who cared for all ethnic groups. The social cohesion observed in the country was to a large extent due to the low level of inter-ethnic rivalry in The Gambia. There are traditionally high levels of inter-ethnic contact and tolerance, due to the country's small size, a common religion, Islam (which for many takes precedence over ethnicity), shared cultural values ​​and economic interdependence. This ethnic heterogeneity meant that any political appeal to ethnic identity would tend to lack weight. In Gambia, after 1962, the PPP sought to emphasize that it was a party representing all Gambians and not just the Mandinka group of its leader, Dawda Jawara. Jawara became adept at broadening his base of support for the PPP, while maintaining its appeal to the rural Mandinka majority. A political pragmatist, Jawara recognized that the country's ethnic heterogeneity meant that a narrow appeal to ethnic identity and distribution of resources on that basis would fail to produce the levels of support he sought. Jawara.