Political violence in African borderlands

This paper examines the relationship between borderlands and political violence in Africa. Do African conflicts relocate or expand across borders? Using spatiotemporal data on conflict events from 1997 to 2024 alongside the innovative OECD/SWAC Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi), the paper suggests that borderlands experience more conflict than non-borderlands. Approximately half of all violent events occur within 100 km of a border. In Africa, political violence also tends to decrease very rapidly with distance from borders. The proportion of violent events recorded in borderlands varies over time and mirrors the cycles of violence that affect specific regions. This share was very high in the early 2000s due to the wars in the Gulf of Guinea and the Great Lakes region. It then declined for less than a decade before increasing substantially in the 2010s. Finally, the paper demonstrates that when conflicts diffuse across borders, they tend to occupy a greater spatial extent rather than simply moving from one side of the border to the other. These findings suggest that more policy efforts should be devoted to monitor the circulation of armed groups across West African borders.