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Department of Geography College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

News

Book cover for The Routledge Handbook of African Borderlands, edited by Olivier Walther, Innocent Moyo, and Isabella Soi

The Routledge Handbook of African Borderlands is out!

a map of Africa

NEW REPORT – Roads and Conflicts in North and West Africa. This report explores the relationship between transport systems and conflict dynamics in North and West Africa over 24 years. Roads, railways, and ports are essential for economic development and the movement of goods and people, forming one of the cornerstones of regional integration. Because of this role, they are also frequent targets of attack and conflict. Read our blob in The Conversation, or a summary in Le Monde (French) and El Pais (Spanish).

Topographic maps of Tessalit-Ouest and Tessalit-Est in Algeria showing regional terrain and geography

We have just launched a new Atlas of Mali. This project explores the geography of Mali, through 122 maps produced by the French National Geographic Institute.

A person speaks at a podium during the Munich Security Conference, with their image projected on a large screen above the audience

On February 17, 2024, we presented our new study on conflict networks in North and West Africa at the Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering of its kind. Our panel was organized by the OECD Sahel and West Africa Club.

A person on a motorcycle travels down a wide, dusty dirt road toward a distant town under a heavy, cloudy sky

Violence moves to rural areas as urbanization increases in North and West Africa, according to a new OECD report and a new paper published in African Security by our lab. The expansion of Jihadist insurgencies explains this ruralization of conflict that affects a growing number of civilians and border regions.

Map of the United States showing flight paths connecting major cities across the country and to the Caribbean and Bahamas

Twenty-one years after 9/11, we modelled the geography of the network member’s many travels from the moment the hijackers first boarded a plane to the United States until they killed 2,977 people on September 11, 2001. Our work was published by Lawfare. A longer version is available as a working paper on SSRN. The data and code are freely accessible on GitHub.

Book cover for African Border Disorders: Addressing Transnational Extremist Organizations, edited by Olivier J. Walther and William F.S. Miles

Our edited book “African Border Disorders. Addressing Transnational Extremist Organizations” is now available in Open Access, thanks to the support of the University of Florida. The book explores the complex relationships that bind states, transnational rebels and extremist organizations, and borders on the African continent. Combining network science with geographical analysis, the book highlights how the fluid alliances and conflicts between rebels, violent extremist organizations and states shape in large measure regional patterns of violence in Africa

Report cover titled West African Studies: Conflict Networks in North and West Africa by OECD and Club Sahel and West Africa Secretariat

The new OECD report “Borders and Conflicts in North and West Africa” was launched at the Munich Security Conference this weekend by Dr. Steve Radil and Mr. Laurent Bossard. In this report, our Lab examined the increasing importance of North and West African border regions in the development of armed conflicts since the end of the 1990s.