Nzima or Akan? An Analysis of Political Leaders and Ethnic Identities in Côte d’Ivoire

Across Africa ethnic identities remain a prominent part of people's lives. From Dakar to Dar-es-Salaam, Africans still in many ways identity most closely with their ethnic group rather than broader national or even African identities. Ethnicity is in many ways a social construction dating back to slavery and colonialization, and has become very much a part of modern politics. For a variety of reasons, political leaders in Africa have sought to stoke, manipulate, and even create ethnic identities to serve their political purposes. Scholars have studied both the effects of ethnicity and also the determinants of these identities. This paper focuses on the latter with a particular consideration of political leaders and their influence on ethnic identities. However, most of the work has focused on differences across ethnic groups or inter-ethnic differences whether as a cause or as an effect. Yet, in many cases what is most interesting and important are the intra-ethnic or within group differences. Many of these groups were divided by the colonizer and today have developed both an ethnic and a national identity. The Akan of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana are an example: there are Akan like the Nzima living on both sides of the border. In this analysis, we want to study the identities of the Nzima within Cote d'Ivoire to answer two questions: (1) To what degree do the Nzima identify with their sub-group versus their larger group the Akan? (2) Do political leaders affect the identity of the Nzima? To answer the second question, we use an interesting division in presidential political leaders by nationality and ethnicity to see if Kwame Nkrumah, an Nzima leader of Ghanian nationality, pushes the Nzima in Cote d'Ivoire to identify with their sub-group and then we consider if fellow Ivorian and Akan member Félix Houphouët-Boigny encourages the Nzima to identify with their ethnic group the Akan. If the borders drawn by the colonizer are truly arbitrary and have divided the same people then a well-known leader like Nkrumah should cause the Nzima to identify as Nzima while a well-known fellow national like Houphouët-Boigny should push them to be Akan. To test our claims, we will conduct field experiments in Grand Bassam in an area that is inhabited by the Nzima. We will randomly select respondents and randomly assign either a control, treatment of Nkrumah, or treatment of Houphouët-Boigny. Follow up questions will ask about their identity, how close they feel to Nzima in Ghana, and several ethnic-identity related questions.