what had to be cut from my speech

Sub-Saharan Africa as it is constituted as I speak has limited potential to develop nationalisms that will conduce to stability within states and, later, harmoniousness between them, if one follows either of the two dominant theories of instilling nationalism in populations. The aforementioned kowtowing to Ethiopia through the national standards tells me, loud and clear, unmistakably, that to an extent the "high culture" of the concerned African countries is an Ethiopian one. Ernest Gellner, in his famed writings on nations and nationalism, asserts that constructing and celebrating a "high culture" is the key component of inculcating a sense of nationhood in peoples, and in his writings he actually touches on the failings of African states to legitimize themselves, by saying that the "high cultures" African states generally applaud are those of their respective former colonizers, rather than ones built from the abundant materials present in Africa itself. Wangari Maathai echoes that sentiment in her book. Formulating and then strengthening "high cultures" should be considerably easier and appreciably more successful if state lines are ever redrawn in such a way that only peoples that are genuinely akin to one another or at least give the international community ample reason to believe that they are capable of pacific cohabitation live side-by-side. That a state like the Sudan can exist is a joke, with a genetic and cultural chasm separating the peoples of its north and its south, who have been warring uninterruptedly since the end of imperialism, who would be quickly divided from one another by state lines under the plan I am proposing, with some resource-sharing concessions worked out in the interest of forestalling further war between the areas. When it comes to the other major theory of nationalism, pivoting on "print capitalism," the tragically low literacy levels in several African states means that much general educational work must first be done before there can be any real possibility of Africans coming to imagine communities in the manner Benedict Andersen delineated. I am convinced that a more logical parceling of Africa's land, in line with its ethnic and ecological realities, will help with literacy and serve to strengthen a sense of community and oneness with the environment to such an extent that Africans may not even have to do much imagining to view themselves as belonging to nations-- environmentally viable ones at that.

And if anything else need be said to illustrate that the African countries of today cannot even rightly be called "nations," look to the lectures of Ernest Renan, the leading intellectual definer of the nation in late nineteenth century Europe when it as a concept was still in utero. To quote Renan: "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form". Outside of the past 150 years, starting with European subjugation and the trauma inextricably linked thereto, few African peoples now resident in the same state can claim that they have a considerable complex of "shared memories," and commentators like Wangari Maathai would likely be appalled at the results of plebiscites asking Africans if they wholeheartedly consent to living in the same states as certain other peoples. On a side note, even though the United States does not pass either of Renan's tests with flying colors, there is incredible plenty here unknown in any sub-Saharan African country, and Gini coefficients tell us that that incredible plenty is rather equitably spread, so the social issues born of the less-than-ideal national community here are nowhere near as damaging as those in African countries where there is generalized indigence, wealth tending to make people more cosmopolitan and the belief that wealth can be attained through honest, hard work, not just through inheritance and rapacity, tending to make people more productive and less rebellious.