Michael Amoah. Decolonizing African Politics: Bridging the Contours of Debate. Springer Nature, 2025. xxiii + 205 pp. Notes. References. Index. 129. 99. Hardcover. ISBN: 9783031892172.

Michael Amoah challenges common clichés about Africa used in university lectures.These clichés include topics such as nationhood, neopatrimonialism, and arbitrary borders.Amoah aims to contribute to the literature on decolonization and course curriculum.He argues that negative images often associated with Africa are not unique to the continent and can be seen in developed Western countries as well.This book consists of ten chapters, opening with an introduction and closing with a conclusion.While some chapters explore their topics in depth using examples, others seem somewhat superficial.In the second chapter, which addresses the concept of nationhood, Amoah traces the idea of nationalism back to its European roots and criticizes the Eurocentrism at its core.While criticizing the dismissal of the idea of nationalism, which emerged in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, outside of northwestern Europe, he attempts to explain nationalism in ten points, drawing on the literature.He criticizes the fact that, despite meeting the fundamental criteria of nationhood, the Aksum Kingdom, Great Zimbabwe, the Ghana Empire, and the Fanti and Ashanti nations in modern Ghana are not considered nations by some Western thinkers.He uses definitions from various sources and literature to discuss the concepts of nation, nation-state, and multinational state, and explains why he sees Ghana as a multinational state.In the third chapter, the author criticizes the widespread tendency in universities to interpret neopatrimonialism as a concept specific to Africa, while pointing out that the concept's origins lie in Western Europe and the United States, with reference to Max Weber.He then attempts to decolonize the concept by providing examples of neopatrimonialism from Ghana, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom.Although the three cases from the West are very different from the Ghanaian case, one can still see traces of neopatrimonialism.Despite the criticism, examples from Africa are more accurate and comprehensive than those from the West in modern times.Therefore, it is not surprising that they are used more widely in university courses.The fourth chapter discusses how arbitrary borders are not only found in Africa, but everywhere in the world.It questions why Africa is stereotypically singled out.According to Amoah, almost all borders are human-made, and the map of Europe is constantly changing.Therefore, the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties and the 1963 African border agreement are no different.