Political Science Professor Martha Wilfahrt was featured in an article in The Economist titled, "How anarchic was Africa?"
In a game of chess two states go to war, the pawns dying to save the king. In mancala, a board game popular in Africa, all pieces are alike, and players try to win them over. That shows how societies think about politics, argues James Robinson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. If powerful states were rare in precolonial Africa, that was because Africans did not want to build them. Statelessness was a sign of success, not failure.
Where precolonial power in Africa was despotic, there is more conflict today, while places once ruled by looser federations fare better, argues Martha Wilfahrt, an assistant professor of political science, in a piece exploring why statelessness in precolonial Africa may have been a sign of success, not failure.