‘Hometown’ Voluntary Associations, Local Development, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Western Nigeria

At a time when most African countries are characterised as ‘strong societies and weak states’, the tendency to afford the state ‘ontological primacy’ in explaining the nature of African political economy is being challenged. One manifestation of this has been a shift in scholarly attention to those intermediary and autonomous organisations which function and sometimes flourish in the space that exists between the state and the household – namely, the various groups which comprise ‘civil society’.