Borderlands are more violent than any other regions in North and West Africa. Examining the geography of violent events across 21 states and 23 years, our new paper published in the Journal of Borderlands Studies shows that the further from the border, the fewer violent events are observed. As shown below, since 1997, nearly 9% of all violent events occurred with 10 km of a border and 25% occurred within 50 km.
Co-authored by Dr. Steven Radil, Dr. Ian Irmischer, and Dr. Olivier Walther, the paper also notes that the importance of borders to violence is not an immutable “law” of political geography. Their relationship is highly variable over time as well as over space. While most border violence was located along the Gulf of Guinea until the early 2000s, the Sahel region has become the new epicenter of political violence in the last decade.
This article is derived from a study made under a grant from the OECD Sahel and West Africa Club. and its Security program. For more information, please download our latest reports on the geography of violence or on conflict networks in the region, both published by the OECD.
By Olivier J. Walther, University of Florida