Africa’s international borders as potential sources of conflict and future threats to peace and security

The document argues that while governance-related intra-state conflicts have become more prevalent than direct inter-state border disputes since the late 1980s, Africa's porous and artificial colonial borders continue to threaten peace and security. These boundaries facilitate the 'regionalisation of conflict' by allowing domestic instability to spill over into neighbouring states, as seen in the Great Lakes region, the Horn of Africa, and West Africa. The author contends that the African Union's (AU) policy of maintaining the colonial status quo (the 'inviolability of national boundaries') has not eliminated tensions. To address this, the AU Border Programme (AUBP) seeks to transform borders from 'barriers' into 'bridges' through proper delimitation and demarcation, which the author identifies as a necessary precondition for successful continental integration and the structural prevention of conflict.

• African borders are characterized as 'arbitrary' and 'artificial' colonial constructs that often merged incompatible social groups into single, unstable polities.
• Since independence, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and later the African Union (AU) adopted a policy of maintaining the status quo regarding borders to avoid chaos, though this has not stopped border-related conflicts.
• Between the late 1950s and late 1990s, more than half of African states were involved in boundary-related conflicts, often involving trans-boundary minorities, resources, or unclear frontiers.
• The nature of conflict in Africa shifted from inter-state border disputes to governance-related intra-state conflicts after the Cold War, but porous borders allow these domestic conflicts to destabilize entire regions.
• In the Great Lakes region, the porous nature of borders and shared ethnic compositions (such as Hutu and Tutsi) facilitated the regionalization of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
• The Horn of Africa is characterized by 'complex emergencies' where states like Ethiopia have been perceived as 'black imperial states', leading to conflicts over notions of a 'Greater Somalia' and 'Greater Tigray'.
• The independence of South Sudan in 2011 represents a rare case of major border revision on the continent, yet the border remains volatile due to strategic oil resources and undecided territories like Abyei.
• In West Africa, the Liberian civil war regionalized through porous borders, spreading to Sierra Leone and Côte dIvoire, where states supported rebel movements in neighbouring countries to secure their own borders.
• The AU Border Programme (AUBP) aims to address the fact that more than two-thirds of Africa's international boundaries remain non-delimited and non-demarcated.
• The AUBP seeks to transform borders from 'barriers' into 'bridges' to facilitate regional integration and the structural prevention of conflict.

APA

Ikome, F. N. (2012). Africa’s international borders as potential sources of conflict and future threats to peace and security. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper_233.pdf

Chicago

Ikome, Francis Nguendi. Africa’s international borders as potential sources of conflict and future threats to peace and security. Institute for Security Studies, 2012. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper_233.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ikome |first1=Francis Nguendi |title=Africa’s international borders as potential sources of conflict and future threats to peace and security |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=May 2012 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper_233.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ikome2012africas, author = {Ikome, Francis Nguendi}, title = {{Africa’s international borders as potential sources of conflict and future threats to peace and security}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2012}, month = may, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Paper_233.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }