The emergency of colonialism in Africa generated numerous perspectives regarding the arguments that have been raised on the continuity of the colonial bureaucracy in the postcolonial state in terms of the present form, nature and organisation of the state as a replica of the colonial state through embracing African history and culture. In trying to deal with the question of the colonial legacy in the modern nation-state, nationalist historians have often emphasised the role of the colonial state in this process. To them, the postcolonial state cannot be understood without an analysis of the institutional colonial state 1 . Mamdani points out the nature and logic of colonial and postcolonial power and argues that the latter is a replica of the former as far as bureaucratic institutions and processes are concerned. 2 The argument Mamdani makes is that the nature of the contemporary African state together with the politics in postindependence Africa including the bureaucracy is just a result of the institutional legacy that colonialism left behind.3 Mamdani points out the nature and logic of colonial and postcolonial power and how the latter is a replica of the former as far as bureaucratic institutions and processes are concerned. On the other hand, most recent scholarship has come out to challenge such a line of thinking by claiming that no single designation can be found to describe the period that follows the post-colonial era, as it is characterized by crosscurrents and contradictions. To them, just like the colonial state was a moment in the history of Africa, the post-colonial state should be seen in the same way. This line of thinking has argued that the postcolonial state ended in the 1990s due to the crisis that saw the African states and the power of most African governments weakened in this process.4 At the same time, Schneider Leander in her intervention in the debate on colonial bureaucracy in the postcolonial state, argues that there is an ardent need to be cautious of histories of development which deny colonial genealogies by creating boundaries between the exploitation of empire and humanitarian development. This paper, therefore, engages the two schools of thought to understand the nature of the post-colonial state. As such, the paper demonstrates the weakness of looking at world history as having just two temporalities i.e., the colonial and the postcolonial as if there is no pre-colonial or beyond the current postcolonial. Even the postcolonial itself is not universal and similar.

Keywords: Colonial Legacy, Postcolonial State, Colonial Bureaucracy, African State Formation, Postcolonial Theory.