Remapping citizenship: Relationships between education levels and ethnonational identities in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Liberia

Abstract

This article investigates the relationships between ethnonational identity and educational level in three West African contexts: Liberia, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. Citizens in these neighboring countries identify with overlapping ethnic groups, but have varied historical experiences, with Americans settling in Liberia; the British colonizing Ghana, and the French colonizing Côte d’Ivoire. In the recent era, Côte d’Ivoire elected an opposition leader at the end of its civil war in 2010; Ghana is considered as the most stable democracy in West Africa; and Liberia experienced two protracted conflicts over the past 30 years and completed its first peaceful transition of power in 2017. We analyze 2014 Afrobarometer data from these three countries to consider if respondents are more likely to value local identities, national identities, or equally value both in each context, and how these valuations vary according to schooling experiences and national context. The findings do not show a linear relationship between education and civic identity, as more respondents who completed only primary school identified primarily with ther national group than those who completed secondary school. Most respondents who completed graduate study in all three countries identified with both their national and ethnic group; none identified primarily with their ethnic groups. In addition, the trends in identity and schooling in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are more similar to each other than to Liberia.