This chapter explains the book’s approach to African statehood and how it differs from the dominant approaches, which are usually fixated on the postcolonial African state as a product of colonialism and seldom entertain conceptions of the African statehood that are not based on the relationship between the post-colony and the colony or the neo-colony and the colony. It is not only empiricists who focus on the hybrid character of the African statehood as a product of the colonial experience of the postcolonial African state, even African moral and political philosophers and theorists seldom resist the lure to focus on the hybrid character of the African state as a product of the colonial experience. This chapter explains that the book will demonstrate ‘how’ and ‘why’ it is moving beyond the aforementioned fixation or focus. In explaining the ‘how,’ the book will engage in both ideal and non-ideal theorisation about the postcolonial African state. While the explanation for ‘why’ simultaneously aims at a very high level of abstraction and concrete and specific analysis.