The nation-building literature of the early 1960s argued that decolonized countries need to overcome pre-colonial ethnic identities and generate national cultures. Africa is the most critical test case of this aspect of modernization theory as it has by far the largest ethnolinguistic fractionalization. We use data from the Afrobarometer to compare the cultures of 85 ethnolinguistic groups, each represented by at least 100 respondents, from 25 African countries. We compared these groups and their nations on items that address cultural modernization and emancipation: ideologies concerning inclusive-exclusive society (gender egalitarianism, homophobia, and xenophobia), submissiveness to authority, and the societal role of religion. Previous research has shown that these are some of the most important markers of cultural differences in the modern world. Hierarchical cluster analysis yielded very homogeneous national clusters and not a single ethnolinguistic cluster cutting across national borders (such as Yoruba of Benin and Yoruba of Nigeria, Ewe of Ghana, and Ewe of Togo, etc.). Only three ethnolinguistic groups (3.5%) remained unattached to their national cluster, regardless of the clustering method. The variation between nations (F values) was often considerably greater than the variation between ethnolinguistic groups. Medial distances between the groups of each country correlated highly with GDP per person (r = −.54), percentage men employed in agriculture (r = .64), percentage men employed in services (r = −.63), and phone subscriptions per person (r = −.61). In conclusion, economic development and modernization diminish cultural differences between ethnolinguistic groups within nations, highlighting those between them.

1960 年代初期的国家建设文献认为，非殖民化国家需要克服前殖民时期的民族认同并产生民族文化。非洲是现代化理论这一方面最关键的测试案例，因为它拥有迄今为止最大的民族语言分化。我们使用来自非洲晴雨表的数据来比较来自 25 个非洲国家的 85 个民族语言群体的文化，每个群体至少有 100 名受访者代表。我们在解决文化现代化和解放的项目上对这些群体及其国家进行了比较：关于包容-排他性社会的意识形态（性别平等主义、恐同症和仇外心理）、对权威的顺从以及宗教的社会作用。先前的研究表明，这些是现代世界文化差异的一些最重要的标志。层次聚类分析产生了非常同质的国家聚类，而不是跨越国界的单一民族语言聚类（例如贝宁的约鲁巴语和尼日利亚的约鲁巴语、加纳的埃维语和多哥的埃维语等）。无论聚类方法如何，只有三个民族语言群体 (3.5%) 仍然没有附属于他们的国家集群。国家之间的差异（与聚类方法无关。国家之间的差异（与聚类方法无关。国家之间的差异（F值）通常远大于民族语言群体之间的差异。每个国家的群体之间的中间距离与人均 GDP ( r  = -.54)、从事农业的男性百分比 ( r  = .64)、从事服务业的男性百分比 ( r  = -.63) 和电话订阅高度相关每人（r  = -.61）。总之，经济发展和现代化减少了国家内部民族语言群体之间的文化差异，突出了他们之间的文化差异。