Africa’s colonial present: development, violence, and postcolonial security

This chapter draws on Derek Gregory’s idea of the ‘colonial present’ in an attempt both to politicize the postcolonial and to embed postcolonial concerns at the heart of geopolitics. It addresses the geopolitical position of Africa in the US-sponsored ‘war on terror’ by exploring the tensions that exist between biopolitical processes of security and development. It concludes with a discussion of alternative modernities which suggests that other forms of biopolitics are being practised, in Africa and elsewhere, that subvert the imperial ambitions of the colonial present even if they do not always succeed in resisting it