Ethnic Identity, Globalization, and Ethnic Conflict in the Northern Region of Ghana: The Case of East Gonja and Kpandai Districts

Abstract

Ethnic conflicts have become a phenomenal event in the Northern Region of Ghana leading to underdevelopment.These conflicts are attributed to the lingering legacies of colonialism, but for many, especially in the Western popular and academic media, singular historical and internal explanations tend to be offered, assigning the conflicts to either Africa's primordial afflictions of ‘tribalism', or the depredations of the continent's proverbial poverty and inequalities, discrimination, authoritarianism and poor governance.This paper therefore attempts to examine the possible causes of these ethnic conflicts within the context of globalization and identity formation. It was realised thatthe causes of the ethnic conflicts in Northern Region and especially, in the East Gonja and Kpandai districts were ethnic identity, inequality, sense of marginalisation, subordination, and land ownership. These factors collectively or individually led to the frequent ethnic clashes.