6/14/2017 Why Africas borders are a mess

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The Economist explains

Why Africas borders are a mess
Colonial administrators drew lines on maps. The reality on the ground is quite different

The Economist explains Nov 17th 2016 | by L.T. | KAMPALA

ARGUMENTS over parking spaces rarely turn into international incidents. Not so in
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June last year at Vurra, on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic
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of Congo (DRC). Young Congolese walked 300 metres beyond the customs post
ostensibly to build a parking yard,Economist.com
in what they said was no mans land. Ugandans
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demurred, blocking the road withEconomist.com
logs. The border was closed for two months.
digitalSuch
confusion is not unusual in Africa. Only a third of its 83,000km of land borders is
properly demarcated. The African Union (AU) is helping states to tidy up the
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6/14/2017 Why Africas borders are a mess

situation, but it has repeatedly pushed back the deadline for finishing the job. It
was meant to be done in 2012, then 2017, and now, it was announced last month, in
2022. Why is it so hard to demarcate Africas borders and why does it matter?

Most pre-colonial borders were fuzzy. Europeans changed that, carving up territory
by drawing lines on maps. We have been giving away mountains and rivers and
lakes to each other, mused the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, in 1890,
only hindered by the small impediments that we never knew where the mountains
and rivers and lakes were. It took 30 years to settle the boundary between Congo
and Uganda, for example, after the Belgians twice got their rivers muddled up. In
1964 independent African states, anxious to avoid conflict, agreed to stick with the
colonial borders. But they made little effort to mark out frontiers on the ground.

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Pity the bureaucrats who have to sort out
this mess. Their quest begins with dusty
Irans success reects the failures of Asian football
GAME THEORY documents, often held in European
Podcast: A poison chalice for GEs new boss archives. Old treaties may refer to rivers
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which have changed course, or tracks that
Finlands populist party has cracked in two have disappeared. Then teams of GPS-
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wielding surveyors must traipse through
See all updates rugged borderlands, erecting pillars,
reassuring locals and in some places
dodging landmines. Above everything, inevitably, is politics. Many borderlands are
coveted for pasture or minerals: disputed lakes harbour oil, gas and fish. Climate
change and population growth are putting pressure on resources, making conflicts
harder to resolve. The contest over Abyei, on the relatively new international
border between Sudan and South Sudan, is illustrative: its knotty history goes back
to the drawing of provincial boundaries in 1905, and takes in ethnic conflicts
sharpened by civil war, growing competition for grazing lands and oil fields that
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until recently produced a quarter of Sudanese output.
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Full-blown territorial wars have been rare in Africa when compared to the TheEconomist
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of Europe. But 19 border disputes are bubbling across the continent, saysFred
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Gateretse-Ngoga, the AUs head of conflict prevention. In 1998 Ethiopia and Eritrea
went to war over a border town, citing different interpretations of colonial treaties.
Nigeria and Cameroon Registertoread3articleseachweekorsubscribeforfullaccess
almost did the same over a peninsula (the International
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6/14/2017 Why Africas borders are a mess

Court of Justice ruled in Cameroons favour in 2002). Fixing frontiers would cement
peace and help local economies. Mali and Burkina Faso, which have twice gone to
war, now share a joint health clinic on the border. Perhaps Uganda and the DRC,
which launched a $200,000 joint demarcation exercise in Vurra last April, should
consider sharing a car park.

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