Professor Opalo has made a convincing case for retaining the current borders of African states, and not seeking to revise them in the interests of reducing ethnic diversity. He is surely correct to criticize African elites for blaming their problems on colonial boundaries. However, his argument would be strengthened by considering some historical examples.
For example, the last 2000 years of European history supply a very interesting case study. Europe’s modern state boundaries have only emerged since 1945, after a complex pattern of major and minor wars, and internal uprisings, stretching back as far as you like to go. (Just consider that in 1945 some 5 million ethnic Germans were forcibly evicted from Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they had been living for 4 or 5 centuries.)
The particular causes of these European wars variously involved differences of language, or of religion, or cultural values, or resistance to invasion by foreign peoples (the ‘barbarians’) in search of economic security, and of course sheer dynastic power plays between ruling families (e.g. Bourbons versus Hapsburgs).
In fact the entire period of African colonization from the 1600s to the 1800s can be seen as a side-effect of rivalries between European powers and family dynasties in search of prestige and economic progress. What finally but only very gradually emerged in Europe was the modern phenomenon of the nation-state with its relatively stable government and workable mechanisms for ensuring some real accountability between the ruling elites and the nation’s social classes and ethnic groups. Nevertheless ethnic conflicts still fester in various regions, such as Northern Ireland, the Basque country between France and Spain, and of course the Balkans.
Compared to this long and often violent history, why should we expect that the post-colonial African states should quickly develop models of stable and economically enlightened elite rule? If the European case is a reasonable comparison, a pessimist might predict the future emergence of some really awful episodes emulating Northern Europe’s Thirty Years War (1618-1648), this time pitting Islam against Christianity across a dozen states in West Africa (rather than Catholicism versus Protestantism as in Europe). Hopefully not.
In the European case, it really did take the bitter lesson of the Thirty Years War, where millions died of war and disease, and whole economies were ruined, in order to convince ruling elites that wars of religion were a very bad idea. But then, 300 years later, those same European elites stumbled into two disastrous World Wars, ending in massive ethnic cleansing and an uneasy peace called the Cold War.
In short, we should not be surprised that modern African states since 1950 have not yet overcome their ethnic and social conflicts and become earthly paradises ruled by enlightened elites. No one else has.
While I agree that no other regions have overcome ethnic and social conflict, they have all managed to deliver much greater economic progress than Africa has. Even in the greatest upheavels (e.g. the Thirty Years War or the World Words) technological and economic improvements continued and often state capacity improved. African societies are not newer on this earth that those of Europe or Asia. In other words, we might expect divisions to continue, but they should not be a reason to prevent improved economic circustances.
I quite agree that African societies are just as old as European or any other societies, and I was aware than my comment might be thought to imply that African states were just beginning a journey that began 2000 years ago in Europe. Clearly, that isn’t so. But the decolonization period of the 1950s and 60s often seemed to imply that the newly independent nations could simply inherit a modern state structure, complete with a democratic constitution, political parties, a modern education system, an impartial judiciary and civil service, and so on. If this had been so in any truly meaningful sense, it should have been possible for the new governing elites merely to build on that inheritance, just as the post-war European states were doing at the same time.
However, anyone with an appreciation of the actual slow and tangled history of those European societies could see how problematic it was to try to transplant (for example) the British culture of Westminster government as it existed in 1960 onto (say) post-independence Nigeria, with its entirely different political culture, ethnic mix, and history of Islamic missionary activity since 1500. (We saw a particularly stupid example of this in the 1990s when the Americans seriously believed they could transplant modern US-style democratic government onto Iraq’s body politic after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Amazing.)
I don’t know enough about Africa to speculate on the reasons for its poor economic progress, but Prof Opalo seems to suggest that ethnic mix is not a fundamentally good explanation. Other states and their ruling elites (e.g. Indonesia and Malaysia since 1949) have been more successful in campaigns using the education system and national media in the task of ‘nation-building’ across linguistically diverse societies. China’s communist party has had spectacular success in jettisoning its socialist delusions (while carefully preserving the theocratic shell of Marxism-Leninism, of course) and achieving capitalist prosperity. But then, we might attribute China’s success to a 2500-year history of strong statehood and centralized bureaucracy.
If I read the original correctly, it is to say that borders are inherently a red-herring, an excuse, for what has been woeful post independence leadership.
In respect of the implantation of a Westminster system to Nigeria, I respectfully disagree. That was the democratic system the Nigerian elite were most familiar with. The failure to modify or adapt it is squarely the consequence of that post-independence elite. Afterall, it was the same system implemented in India (just as fractious a society) and Singapore. Those two countries modified things to suit their politics.
Even in the case of Iraq, the imposition of the US-style system in Iraq has so far proven to be more impactful and lasting than many expected. Yes, it has been modified and has problems, but the regional alternative was the strongman-for-life and the Iraqis have not yet chosen to go back to that. The US intervention in this respect was decisive.
I agree that the question of borders and ethnicity is a red herring for poor post-independence leadership. We have seen a similarly regressive development in Malaysia, where a few years ago the government began stirring up trouble for the ethnic Chinese, simply to divert attention from its own problems of corruption. It ignored the lessons of 1967, where there had been serious rioting between Malays and Chinese in the major cities.
Maybe India’s real success in evolving a stable system of parliamentary democracy is the exception. Let’s hope it survives the strains imposed by Modi. Yet things are pretty desperate in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Does that point to a causal difference between Hindu and Islamic political cultures? Hmmm.
As for Iraq, as you say the US intervention must have had a huge impact on the political class, and so far there has been no return to vicious dictatorship. Anyhow, I think we both agree that all these post-colonial countries need to work out their own long-term futures, and it is pointless to blame the former colonial regimes. Sadly, we can’t recommend that their elites look for inspiration among the current generation of Western leaders, can we?
When we talk about Africa’s borders as “arbitrary,” are we always talking about the same thing? Often, the term points less to randomness and more to the way borders were drawn without deep regard for the lived geographies, kinship systems, and political imaginations of those they came to enclose. In this sense, “arbitrary” can mean misaligned with social worlds rather than simply “without African involvement.”
Even if African rulers or rebels influenced the map’s final shape, this participation likely often happened under duress, in contexts of severe military disadvantage; within frameworks set by imperial powers; and without the ability to meaningfully incorporate the fears, attachments, and imagined futures of all the peoples affected. The fact that some African agency existed doesn’t mean the resulting borders were aligned with the lifeworlds of those inside them — nor does it erase the long-term consequences of those misalignments.
If African leaders shaped or chose to maintain certain borders, does that necessarily make them less arbitrary — or more legitimate? Such decisions may have been made under immense constraints, within the political logics and urgencies of the moment, and without fully anticipating the long-term frictions or fractures that make people still call them arbitrary today.
Perhaps the harder question is whether elite-level agency changes how borders are experienced on the ground, or whether the underlying dissonance between state lines and social landscapes remains, regardless of who drew them.
Looking at the map included in the article (and from my knowledge of Kenya and Uganda it is reasonable given the granularity), how should those societies have entered the 20th Century? There surely couldn't have been hundreds of independent entities?
So there would have been consolidation. For example, Buganda and Bunyoro are as close culturally as any two societies can be, yet they would have entered the century as antagnostic nations. That they are now in the same nation ultimately reflects both Baganda and Banyoro centuries-long political ambition, each to absorb the other, and the primary agents for this were the people of Uganda.
I very strongly reject the interpretation of history that colonial policy was divide to rule, when it so manifestly was consolidate to rule. The divisions ascribed to colonial policy very long predate the (historically very short) colonial period and have survived it.
I'm in a minority in believing the borders were, with a few exceptions, very well done (not perfect, but good enough), by very few people, in very little time, with very little resource, but a high degree of political realism and a lot of local input. They have been massively beneficial in almost all cases by forestalling what would have been extensive mechanised warfare of the C20th. That is why they remain and have been strengthened.
South Sudan is an instructive example here. If it was the 2000s and you were trying to better align borders with identities, granting South Sudan independence might have been the first example many jumped to. Christian, African South vs Muslim, Arab North. But when it actually did get independence, it became very clear that Dinka and Nuer identities were actually very salient. Obviously there's much more nuance to all this, but that's your point: identity is much more malleable and complex that the artificial borders thesis assumes.
Learned more about Africa from this article than from my 15 years of reading the Economist. Thanks for setting this out to clearly and challenging my assumptions.
Botswana is ethnically and politically dominated by ethnic Tswana, who constitute 80% of the national population. Most African countries do not have demographics like that of Botswana where one ethnicity is numerically overwhelming.
This is true, but Somalia too has that sort of demographics, and in their case the politics breaks down at a clan level. So homogeniety of language or culture is not so much the issue, but rather politics. They need to send more students to study in Botswana and imbibe the political culture.
This is really good! Loved the piece. I have a few disagreements with concrete examples that I would love to know your thoughts on! I'll get back to you with another reply soon.
This is a brilliant article that destroys a lot of the arguments anyone would make about revising borders, but then I don't think I have come across anyone seriously making that argument (save for Biafran secessionists). But I do not think you adequately addressed the issue about the creation of economically unviable states. Even if there is no feasible workaround to it, it is not absurd to acknowledge it as a fact.
This is an absolutely superb piece. I’ve had thoughts along these lines for a long time and I’m delighted to see that someone more capable than I also had the idea and expressed it so clearly and convincingly. In other parts of the globe the borders we now regard as nature were forged by centuries of not millennia of war. The African way, while imperfect, is still better.
Mr. Opalo's fine article about African borders is particularly of interest in view of the tariff war between America and the World. Its effect on business is being felt, particularly by consumers. One example is the effect of the recent division between Canada and the US, with its effect on shoppers in border states. President Trump denigrates the border and, if he could use an eraser as well as his Sharpie pen, he'd "redraw" or otherwise edit the US-Canadian maps. As an ailurophile, (note the Substack post "It's Humans' Lives" by Captain Midnight and Self, I'm considering a postapocalyptic landscape where cats and other "animals" have outlived humanity. The question for felines is geographic and social organization among species, and breeds of domestic cats. Looking back at the attempts to combine, say, Mali and Guinea, for example, I think the challenge is to merge states with leaders who don't want to give up their statuses and privilege. The Sudanese conflict is an example. For felines, there's a past reference to the cats of Kilkenny--a vile rhyme by British invasive soldiers using severed tails. Even so, there's truth behind the ditty. Political or economic similarity doesn't override local sovereignty.
Thank you for this exceptional article. It provides a perspective that is definitely key to understanding the world we live in better (and it is not just applicable to Africa).
Exceptional piece! In a previous article, I argued that African borders are increasingly being reconfigured through violence perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. Decades of complacent and low quality elites have entrenched structurally fragile states (the DRC and Sudan come to mind). This drove me to conclude that there still conceptual and political space to revisit Africa’s colonial-era borders.
Professor Opalo has made a convincing case for retaining the current borders of African states, and not seeking to revise them in the interests of reducing ethnic diversity. He is surely correct to criticize African elites for blaming their problems on colonial boundaries. However, his argument would be strengthened by considering some historical examples.
For example, the last 2000 years of European history supply a very interesting case study. Europe’s modern state boundaries have only emerged since 1945, after a complex pattern of major and minor wars, and internal uprisings, stretching back as far as you like to go. (Just consider that in 1945 some 5 million ethnic Germans were forcibly evicted from Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they had been living for 4 or 5 centuries.)
The particular causes of these European wars variously involved differences of language, or of religion, or cultural values, or resistance to invasion by foreign peoples (the ‘barbarians’) in search of economic security, and of course sheer dynastic power plays between ruling families (e.g. Bourbons versus Hapsburgs).
In fact the entire period of African colonization from the 1600s to the 1800s can be seen as a side-effect of rivalries between European powers and family dynasties in search of prestige and economic progress. What finally but only very gradually emerged in Europe was the modern phenomenon of the nation-state with its relatively stable government and workable mechanisms for ensuring some real accountability between the ruling elites and the nation’s social classes and ethnic groups. Nevertheless ethnic conflicts still fester in various regions, such as Northern Ireland, the Basque country between France and Spain, and of course the Balkans.
Compared to this long and often violent history, why should we expect that the post-colonial African states should quickly develop models of stable and economically enlightened elite rule? If the European case is a reasonable comparison, a pessimist might predict the future emergence of some really awful episodes emulating Northern Europe’s Thirty Years War (1618-1648), this time pitting Islam against Christianity across a dozen states in West Africa (rather than Catholicism versus Protestantism as in Europe). Hopefully not.
In the European case, it really did take the bitter lesson of the Thirty Years War, where millions died of war and disease, and whole economies were ruined, in order to convince ruling elites that wars of religion were a very bad idea. But then, 300 years later, those same European elites stumbled into two disastrous World Wars, ending in massive ethnic cleansing and an uneasy peace called the Cold War.
In short, we should not be surprised that modern African states since 1950 have not yet overcome their ethnic and social conflicts and become earthly paradises ruled by enlightened elites. No one else has.
While I agree that no other regions have overcome ethnic and social conflict, they have all managed to deliver much greater economic progress than Africa has. Even in the greatest upheavels (e.g. the Thirty Years War or the World Words) technological and economic improvements continued and often state capacity improved. African societies are not newer on this earth that those of Europe or Asia. In other words, we might expect divisions to continue, but they should not be a reason to prevent improved economic circustances.
I quite agree that African societies are just as old as European or any other societies, and I was aware than my comment might be thought to imply that African states were just beginning a journey that began 2000 years ago in Europe. Clearly, that isn’t so. But the decolonization period of the 1950s and 60s often seemed to imply that the newly independent nations could simply inherit a modern state structure, complete with a democratic constitution, political parties, a modern education system, an impartial judiciary and civil service, and so on. If this had been so in any truly meaningful sense, it should have been possible for the new governing elites merely to build on that inheritance, just as the post-war European states were doing at the same time.
However, anyone with an appreciation of the actual slow and tangled history of those European societies could see how problematic it was to try to transplant (for example) the British culture of Westminster government as it existed in 1960 onto (say) post-independence Nigeria, with its entirely different political culture, ethnic mix, and history of Islamic missionary activity since 1500. (We saw a particularly stupid example of this in the 1990s when the Americans seriously believed they could transplant modern US-style democratic government onto Iraq’s body politic after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Amazing.)
I don’t know enough about Africa to speculate on the reasons for its poor economic progress, but Prof Opalo seems to suggest that ethnic mix is not a fundamentally good explanation. Other states and their ruling elites (e.g. Indonesia and Malaysia since 1949) have been more successful in campaigns using the education system and national media in the task of ‘nation-building’ across linguistically diverse societies. China’s communist party has had spectacular success in jettisoning its socialist delusions (while carefully preserving the theocratic shell of Marxism-Leninism, of course) and achieving capitalist prosperity. But then, we might attribute China’s success to a 2500-year history of strong statehood and centralized bureaucracy.
If I read the original correctly, it is to say that borders are inherently a red-herring, an excuse, for what has been woeful post independence leadership.
In respect of the implantation of a Westminster system to Nigeria, I respectfully disagree. That was the democratic system the Nigerian elite were most familiar with. The failure to modify or adapt it is squarely the consequence of that post-independence elite. Afterall, it was the same system implemented in India (just as fractious a society) and Singapore. Those two countries modified things to suit their politics.
Even in the case of Iraq, the imposition of the US-style system in Iraq has so far proven to be more impactful and lasting than many expected. Yes, it has been modified and has problems, but the regional alternative was the strongman-for-life and the Iraqis have not yet chosen to go back to that. The US intervention in this respect was decisive.
I agree that the question of borders and ethnicity is a red herring for poor post-independence leadership. We have seen a similarly regressive development in Malaysia, where a few years ago the government began stirring up trouble for the ethnic Chinese, simply to divert attention from its own problems of corruption. It ignored the lessons of 1967, where there had been serious rioting between Malays and Chinese in the major cities.
Maybe India’s real success in evolving a stable system of parliamentary democracy is the exception. Let’s hope it survives the strains imposed by Modi. Yet things are pretty desperate in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Does that point to a causal difference between Hindu and Islamic political cultures? Hmmm.
As for Iraq, as you say the US intervention must have had a huge impact on the political class, and so far there has been no return to vicious dictatorship. Anyhow, I think we both agree that all these post-colonial countries need to work out their own long-term futures, and it is pointless to blame the former colonial regimes. Sadly, we can’t recommend that their elites look for inspiration among the current generation of Western leaders, can we?
Thanks for penning this! I'm going to make it required reading for the African Pol and Govt class.
Ditto for my Contemporary Africa Policy Issues course at the University of Texas LBJ (grad) School of Public Affairs.
When we talk about Africa’s borders as “arbitrary,” are we always talking about the same thing? Often, the term points less to randomness and more to the way borders were drawn without deep regard for the lived geographies, kinship systems, and political imaginations of those they came to enclose. In this sense, “arbitrary” can mean misaligned with social worlds rather than simply “without African involvement.”
Even if African rulers or rebels influenced the map’s final shape, this participation likely often happened under duress, in contexts of severe military disadvantage; within frameworks set by imperial powers; and without the ability to meaningfully incorporate the fears, attachments, and imagined futures of all the peoples affected. The fact that some African agency existed doesn’t mean the resulting borders were aligned with the lifeworlds of those inside them — nor does it erase the long-term consequences of those misalignments.
If African leaders shaped or chose to maintain certain borders, does that necessarily make them less arbitrary — or more legitimate? Such decisions may have been made under immense constraints, within the political logics and urgencies of the moment, and without fully anticipating the long-term frictions or fractures that make people still call them arbitrary today.
Perhaps the harder question is whether elite-level agency changes how borders are experienced on the ground, or whether the underlying dissonance between state lines and social landscapes remains, regardless of who drew them.
Looking at the map included in the article (and from my knowledge of Kenya and Uganda it is reasonable given the granularity), how should those societies have entered the 20th Century? There surely couldn't have been hundreds of independent entities?
So there would have been consolidation. For example, Buganda and Bunyoro are as close culturally as any two societies can be, yet they would have entered the century as antagnostic nations. That they are now in the same nation ultimately reflects both Baganda and Banyoro centuries-long political ambition, each to absorb the other, and the primary agents for this were the people of Uganda.
I very strongly reject the interpretation of history that colonial policy was divide to rule, when it so manifestly was consolidate to rule. The divisions ascribed to colonial policy very long predate the (historically very short) colonial period and have survived it.
I'm in a minority in believing the borders were, with a few exceptions, very well done (not perfect, but good enough), by very few people, in very little time, with very little resource, but a high degree of political realism and a lot of local input. They have been massively beneficial in almost all cases by forestalling what would have been extensive mechanised warfare of the C20th. That is why they remain and have been strengthened.
South Sudan is an instructive example here. If it was the 2000s and you were trying to better align borders with identities, granting South Sudan independence might have been the first example many jumped to. Christian, African South vs Muslim, Arab North. But when it actually did get independence, it became very clear that Dinka and Nuer identities were actually very salient. Obviously there's much more nuance to all this, but that's your point: identity is much more malleable and complex that the artificial borders thesis assumes.
Learned more about Africa from this article than from my 15 years of reading the Economist. Thanks for setting this out to clearly and challenging my assumptions.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/28-liberalism-at-large?srsltid=AfmBOorqSXGTnAOaVSQIDpH5jTxIrp0OAjI3rM125DyJN_yikWbVCa6h
Botswana is ethnically and politically dominated by ethnic Tswana, who constitute 80% of the national population. Most African countries do not have demographics like that of Botswana where one ethnicity is numerically overwhelming.
This is true, but Somalia too has that sort of demographics, and in their case the politics breaks down at a clan level. So homogeniety of language or culture is not so much the issue, but rather politics. They need to send more students to study in Botswana and imbibe the political culture.
This is really good! Loved the piece. I have a few disagreements with concrete examples that I would love to know your thoughts on! I'll get back to you with another reply soon.
This is a brilliant article that destroys a lot of the arguments anyone would make about revising borders, but then I don't think I have come across anyone seriously making that argument (save for Biafran secessionists). But I do not think you adequately addressed the issue about the creation of economically unviable states. Even if there is no feasible workaround to it, it is not absurd to acknowledge it as a fact.
Even now it's not clear that Biafra has been accepted as an integral part of Nigeria.
Thank you for this, Prof. I’m going to read it with my class this coming Fall.
This is an absolutely superb piece. I’ve had thoughts along these lines for a long time and I’m delighted to see that someone more capable than I also had the idea and expressed it so clearly and convincingly. In other parts of the globe the borders we now regard as nature were forged by centuries of not millennia of war. The African way, while imperfect, is still better.
Mr. Opalo's fine article about African borders is particularly of interest in view of the tariff war between America and the World. Its effect on business is being felt, particularly by consumers. One example is the effect of the recent division between Canada and the US, with its effect on shoppers in border states. President Trump denigrates the border and, if he could use an eraser as well as his Sharpie pen, he'd "redraw" or otherwise edit the US-Canadian maps. As an ailurophile, (note the Substack post "It's Humans' Lives" by Captain Midnight and Self, I'm considering a postapocalyptic landscape where cats and other "animals" have outlived humanity. The question for felines is geographic and social organization among species, and breeds of domestic cats. Looking back at the attempts to combine, say, Mali and Guinea, for example, I think the challenge is to merge states with leaders who don't want to give up their statuses and privilege. The Sudanese conflict is an example. For felines, there's a past reference to the cats of Kilkenny--a vile rhyme by British invasive soldiers using severed tails. Even so, there's truth behind the ditty. Political or economic similarity doesn't override local sovereignty.
Thank you for this exceptional article. It provides a perspective that is definitely key to understanding the world we live in better (and it is not just applicable to Africa).
Exceptional piece! In a previous article, I argued that African borders are increasingly being reconfigured through violence perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. Decades of complacent and low quality elites have entrenched structurally fragile states (the DRC and Sudan come to mind). This drove me to conclude that there still conceptual and political space to revisit Africa’s colonial-era borders.
https://open.substack.com/pub/africatalystblog/p/redrawing-the-african-map?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=58ppmn