Making African borders from below

This historical contribution explains how borders in Africa came to be vernacularised between the partition and the start of the new millennium. It argues that borderlanders emerged as active players by learning not only how to live with borders, and to exploit the opportunities they presented, but also in shaping border governance. Colonial states placed a premium on taxing external trade and attracting population, whereas their post-colonial successors placed greater emphasis on protecting (largely state-owned) industries and seeking to limit population influxes. With each twist and turn, border populations found ways of blunting or subverting what was not in their interests. The vernacular border was embedded in local understandings of connectedness and hierarchy as much as it was a product of statecraft. This produced certain paradoxical effects, the net consequence of which was to impart deeper meanings to borders, which could be inclusive as well as divisive.