African Borders: Putting Paid to a Myth

Africa’s borders have a poor reputation. Even today, some say that they are arbitrary and absurd, porous and undermined, indefensible and undefended. Yet the principle of intangibility of borders, agreed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964, has held, with rare exceptions. The time has come to put paid to the enduring myth that the scars of colonialism are responsible for all of Africa’s troubles. This assertion about the disadvantageous consequences of Africa’s borders is just one of a number of received ideas, others being the absence of any pre-colonial political boundaries, and the lack of consideration shown by Europeans to pre-existing geopolitical realities. Certainly, there is often too little demarcation, though much progress has been made, but Africa’s borders act as creative interfaces, which are exploited by the trading networks that drive globalization from the bottom up. The borders of Africa have become Africa’s borders, agreed as such and strengthened by a process of border reaffirmation supported by the African Union. The origin of the continent’s internal tensions lies elsewhere, the key issue being appropriation and control of the periphery and the external frontiers.