On Africa’s “arbitrary” borders and their alleged impacts

Borders are not the leading cause of state weakness or political and economic underdevelopment in Africa

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Flag of the Union of African States (Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union) which existed between 1961-1963).

I: All borders are arbitrary

All borders are artificial, and arbitrarily reflect the limits of technological know-how, relative military strength and appetite for total war, prevailing ideas about what makes a normatively effective moral community, and the depths of human imagination. A river is a natural border until you encounter a fascinating technology called a bridge. Mountains, too, seem like natural borders until tunnels and airplanes become a possibility. With regard to human geography, ethnicity-based boundaries may seem like natural borders until you realize that people can learn new languages, assimilate into new cultures, invent traditions whole clothe, and in so doing accumulate new layers of identities. Furthermore, the optimality of borders is neither an objective measure nor temporally stable. It all depends on what people do within the borders they have. To reiterate, all borders are arbitrary.

Understanding the role of borders in shaping the political economy of African states is important. At present, the idea that the artificiality of borders is a major barrier to the emergence of well-ordered and prosperous societies on the Continent has a lot of purchase. This post debunks this myth.

I argue that the notion that African elites mindlessly accepted colonial borders is flat out wrong. First, African rulers and armed rebellions in the colonial era shaped the cartographical outcomes of the colonial wars of conquest. The tendency to downplay the fierce anti-colonial wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a great disservice to African military history and full understanding of why Europeans were able to eventually win the wars of conquest (and how to guarantee that this never happens again). Second, following decolonization the Independence Generation considered the question of borders and chose the path of retaining the existing map. On the merits, I think this was the right decision.

Many African (intellectual) elites’ mindset about ethnicity and state-building is the problem, not the Continent’s borders.

Let’s start by steelmanning the arguments advanced by the “artificial borders” school of thought.

First, European partition created politically and socially unviable states. For instance, having antagonistic ethnic groups within the same borders doomed postcolonial states to the stylized ills of ethnic fractionalization (see here for the debate on whether these even exist). Divide-and-rule tactics during colonialism exacerbated this problem by ossifying perceived inter-ethnic differences (e.g., via ethnic specialization in important professions or bits of the public service). This then baked in spatial-cum-ethnic inequalities and future inter-ethnic distributional rivalries (setting the stage for “ethnic census” elections), as well as high levels of elite political instability.

Second, European partition created economically unviable states. Colonialism was about exploitative extraction of natural resources and racial domination. Therefore, the creation of colonial borders did not optimize for the right mix of natural resource endowments, infrastructure, labor, and markets. Postcolonial countries ended up being too small, too big, and/or too isolated from global markets; and with less-than-ideal population geographies.

A third argument is only indirectly related to actual borders. It posits that European partition planted the seeds of neocolonial exploitation and dependency. This meant that the socially, politically, and economically unviable states so created would always be vulnerable to external manipulation. Furthermore, the structural humiliation of accepting an externally imposed cartographical order locked in a mental dependency on the imperial metropoles that would always gnaw away at African agency and level of ambition (notice that this is more than a trivial ick factor of accepting European imposed borders).

Stated differently, being bequeathed borders on a platter prevented Africa’s ruling elites from acquiring (through conquests?) the historical self-awareness and sense of mission needed to run well-ordered and prosperous postcolonial societies.

The common solutions proposed by the “artificial borders” school of thought are a little harder to steelman since nearly all belong in the category of expressive politics.

Many invoke Pan-Africanism and call for the creation of a United States of Africa — essentially, erasing the borders. The mild version of this solution calls for attenuating the impact of colonial borders by deepening economic integration (a totally reasonable proposition). The extreme version calls for a Continental superstate (a fuzzy proposition, at best). The biggest obstacle to the creation of a Continental superstate, of course, is that barely any African country would readily cede sovereignty to a Continental entity. We have lots of evidence of them failing to do so on both low and high stakes regional projects. Plus it’s never clear how creating such a superstate would address the challenge of creating self-governing subnational units.

The more daring solution calls for a redrawing of African borders. The naive form of this solution assumes away the potential for conflict, and envisions some form of consensus-based swapping peoples and territories (I guess because that always works so well?) The realistic form is more interesting, and accepts that conflict would be inevitable — and perhaps even necessary — if the process of redrawing borders were to yield optimal results (war makes states, after all). The idea is that redrawing borders through war would create incentives for elite investments in building strong states and nations. Consequently, the resulting borders would optimize for social cohesion as well as political and economic development.

How is the “artificial borders” school of thought wrong?

Let’s be blunt. First and foremost, most “artificial borders” arguments hinge on a totally indefensible primordialist conception of ethnic identity. The idea that people cannot live within the same boundaries and prosper — regardless of how those boundaries were created — simply because of the languages they happen to speak or some “ancient hatreds” is utterly ludicrous.

No amount of intellectualizing can sanitize such coddling of primordialist feeble-mindedness. Plus these arguments totally ignore the rich history of multi-ethnic coexistence on the Continent, including within states that were established through violent conquests. There’s also the problem that it would be difficult to determine the exact period in the precolonial past when borders were actually “natural” or optimal.

Notions of border neutrality and/or optimality are not temporally consistent. Rather, they are endogenous to the prevailing military/civil technology and mental models of who has the moral right to belong in any given polity.

George Murdock’s map of ethnic boundaries in Africa (created in the late 1950s). Source: Earthly Mission

In addition, it’s far from clear that ethnically homogenous African states would be better run and prosperous. All you have to do is consider for a moment what Africa’s arch tribalist presidents have done for their co-ethnics to see the folly of the claim that a rationalization of ethnic belonging would magically unlock prosperity on the Continent (or the case of Somalia). Low ambition elites won’t change their proverbial spots regardless of whether they are dealing with coethnics or non-coethnics.

To be clear, I concur with Peter Ekeh and others that there are real problems with how postcolonial African states chose to deal with multiethnicity. The solution, however, cannot be to redraw borders. What’s needed is a fundamental change of African (intellectual) elites’ mindset regarding citizenship and the role of identity in modern society.

To this end, there is ample evidence from history on what works — from the fact that inter-ethnic conflict is actually a lot rarer than the “artificial borders” school would like us believe. People seldom fight just because they are different, inter-ethnic cooperation is possible and common); to concrete examples of nation-building in countries like Tanzania and Botswana (leadership matters and success is possible); to the fact that survey data points to increasingly more entrenched attachments to national identities (identity is highly malleable and it’s futile to try and fix it in time).

While it’s true that many contemporary well-ordered societies approximate ethnic homogeneity, it’s worth noting that this outcome is itself endogenous to stateness. All else equal, places with strong states trend towards either ethnic homogeneity or comity amidst multi-ethnicity. The reverse is also true. Historical malgovernment and/or lack of centralized states are correlated with multi-ethnicity and inability to cooperate at scale, especially across identity lines. The point here is that there’s nothing uniquely African about the negative correlates of multi-ethnicity. It’s the ubiquitous absence of dependable and impartial states that perennially forces people to cling to the imagined, and sometimes very real, safety of ethnic groups (and then intellectualize their terribly suboptimal conditions).

Which brings us to the problem of weak states in Africa. Are the “artificial” borders to blame? Not really.

First, let’s consider the bellicist counterfactual. Since logic dictates that war would be the only way to redraw African borders, it’s worth asking the question: If African states got to redraw their borders through conflict, would this process yield prosperous strong states or perpetual irredentist wars fueled by foreign predation? On the available historical evidence, the answer appears to be the latter.

Second, it’s unclear whether African border wars would necessarily optimize for ethnic comity or economic viability. Thats not how borders typically emerge. Instead, their resolution (if ever) would arbitrarily reflect a balance of military power among belligerents — which would primarily be a function of prevailing distribution of access to military technology and patterns of foreign intervention. Furthermore, in most cases extensive foreign intervention would prolong conflicts. Once war begins it typically takes a life of its own. In fact, regional wars would very likely turn back the clock with regard to ethnic attachments. War’s destruction of state capacity would also mean a rapid retribalization of the region. Without strong states, people would rationally run to their ethnic groups for protection. We should also expect that such conflicts would disproportionately produce the likes of Charles Taylor and Mohamed Farrah Aidid, as opposed to the likes of Kagame, Garang, or Meles.

Third, the “artificial borders” arguments err in downplaying the role of ideas in the creation of well-ordered societies within strong states. Throughout history there have been multiple paths towards strong states. Some places did it through centuries of war. Others developed strong systems of law and social accountability, often aided by appeals to religion and mutual/competitive learning. Yet others succeeded via emulation/institutional diffusion. With this in mind, it makes little sense to fixate on the bellicist path as the only option for state-building across the Continent. The Independence Generation was right in their (implicit) choice of the “institutional diffusion” path of state-building.

Finally, the historical record shows (see here and here) that it’s simply not true that Africans had no role in the creation of colonial borders across the Continent. Ignoring this fact leads lots of people into thinking that Africa’s maps are historical exceptions and therefore causally linked to the region’s underdevelopment. They are not historical exceptions, and their causal link to Africa’s underdevelopment is terribly overrated. Acknowledging African agency in the creation of colonial maps isn’t meant to downplay the humiliating horrors of colonialism. The fact of the matter is that, despite the ickiness of violent foreign involvement in their creation, African borders weren’t necessarily as “arbitrary” as many claim they are.

II: Africa’s Independence Generation had very good reasons to not redraw inherited colonial borders

Perhaps the best way to think about African borders is to interrogate the approach taken by the Independence Generation. They were the ones in the arena, and made the call to keep the borders drawn by colonialists. They were also a very thoughtful bunch, unlike the subsequent generations of complacent leaders that totally lost the plot on state and nation building. We should always take them seriously. The historical record shows that the Independence Generation were motivated by the following:

1) Future integration of the Continent would erase the significance of colonial borders. There was no reason to engage in potentially violent redrawing of borders that would, in any case, be hijacked by the colonialists since future integration of the Continent would render those borders useless. While there was disagreement over the form (economic vs both economic and political) and pace (immediately or gradually) of integration, there was a convergence on the idea that allowing the free movement of people and goods was an imperative that would diminish the significance of the inherited colonial borders.

2) After circa 70 years, most of the colonial borders had become historical facts both on the ground and in people’s minds. This enabled the emerging post-World War II norm of territorial integrity to take root on the Continent. In addition, identification with specific boundaries and their related histories (in addition to personal ambition) meant that African leaders weren’t willing to give up their sovereignty right after independence. These factors motivated widespread support the Organization of African Unity’s principle of non-interference (of course this dovetailed nicely with the fact that some African leaders merely wanted to avoid external accountability from the OAU family).

3) Not redrawing borders helped avoid fractious internal ethnic politics. Having inherited polities that colonialists had deliberately divided along ethnic lines, African leaders were wary of igniting intra-ethnic strife through irredentist wars. They knew that they were leading young and fairly weak states. Were these wars to break out, it’s conceivable that many of Africa’s big ethnic groups (many of which viewed themselves as bonafide nations) would have wanted to create their own states. In the same vein, minority ethnic group would have wanted out of such political formations. The view at the time was that this was an unnecessary distraction from the urgent task of ridding the Continent of poverty, ignorance, and disease.

4) African leaders were ambitious state builders in their own right. The almost uniformly deplorable quality of African leaders over the last 50 years has led many to forget the levels of ambition that drove the Independence Generation. Despite sometimes being the first literate members of their families, these leaders dreamt big and achieved a lot. They forced out colonial powers then went about imagining a different and more prosperous future for their peoples. They had great plans for nation-building through education, rapid development, and urbanization. They wanted to create modern African societies. Many of them were grounded and confident in their convictions. They did the best they could with the endowments they had. The fact that subsequent generations failed to continue executing on the independence dream isn’t a good reason to fault the Independence Generation’s choices regarding Africa’s borders.

For example, what’s the excuse for contemporary African countries’ failure to graft serious nation-building programs onto their mass ducation systems? What’s the excuse for the lack of developmentalist policies that weaken atavistic attachments to primordialism and instead champion belonging to prosperous, modern, and multiethnic civic societies? What’s the excuse for repeatedly choosing politics of ethic exclusion and the mediocrity it breeds?

III: Conclusion

All this to say that Africa’s post-independence elites did not mindlessly accept colonial borders. As discussed above, they seriously thought about them and, in my view, made the right call — which was to focus on the urgent task of nation and state building. Those who imagine that merely drawing lines on a map, whether after war or consensus, would magically create incentives for elites to build strong states and accompanying national identities are mistaken. After getting rid of supposedly incompatible non-coethnics, the same feeble-minded primordialism that we’ve witnessed over the last 60 years would’ve ignited inter-clan rivalries in the newly formed mono-ethnic states. Again, it’s the mindset about ethnic identity that’s the problem, not Africa’s borders.

I cannot stress this enough. A key weakness in much of postcolonial discourse in Africa is the tendency to throw around expressive assertions that are thin on factual analysis. Often, such assertions center foreign actors and influence at the expense of seriously engaging African interests and perspectives. The alleged impacts of Africa’s artificial borders is one of those assertions. It puffs up the everlasting power of colonialists; defines the problem in a manger that’s insoluble — thereby imposing a mental straightjacket on anyone who takes the claims seriously; barely considers the role of African agency, thereby undermining the idea that Africans have always played a role in their histories; and then proposes politically infeasible magical shortcuts (just draw new borders!) to fix the problem. Consideration of real-life trade-offs is never on the table.

In general, this tendency to believe in maximally perfect initial conditions makes it very hard to do the possible — whether it’s state-building or pursuing economic growth and development.

In the case of the inherited colonial borders, the possible is to seriously get to work on building strong states and national identities; coupled with a good faith commitment to Continental economic integration. African leaders and intellectuals must embrace these imperatives with urgency. While it’s important to understand how (neo)colonialism altered African societies for the worse, the goal should always be to concretize the mechanisms at play and then invest in undoing them; in addition to internalizing the deep humiliation of foreign domination and working to ensure it never happens again.

Above all, it’s important for everyone to accept that there will be no turning back of historical time to create auspicious conditions for African state-building and economic development. History being what it is, those who want strong, united, and prosperous African states must work mighty hard to build them within the current borders. That’s not just a practical compromise. It’s the smart thing to do.