Borderlands in crisis: security, identity, and marginalisation in Africa

Dr. Okumu argued that African borders—often misunderstood as static, linear demarcations—embody complex histories and shifting narratives, with each segment reflecting a unique mix of social, ecological, and historical forces. The arbitrary and shifting nature of these colonial boundaries, he asserted, continues to generate far-reaching consequences for migration, integration, and, most acutely, security. Indeed, the lack of reliable African-generated data on borderland movement and the excessive reliance on European paradigms not only hinders African agency but has enabled African migration to be “weaponized” in contemporary European politics. Okumu cautioned against the uncritical adoption of foreign vocabularies and conceptual confusion—terms like “intangible borders,” “ungoverned spaces,” and “security zones”—which, he argued, produce both analytical paralysis and policy disempowerment. He highlighted the persistent failure to “Africanize” either the legal management or the imaginative register of boundaries, noting that, six decades post-independence, many boundaries retain the Euro-colonial meanings for which they were originally designed.

Building on this, Dr. Coulibaly examined how externally imposed borders have catalyzed the fabrication and weaponization of ethnic identities, producing regional fascisms and cycles of marginalization and violence. The legacy of colonial manipulation, she noted, is not just a series of technical cartographic problems but a set of exclusionary narratives that strip communities of belonging and foster nativist antagonisms. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, Tutsi communities have been forced into the impossible position of being “forever foreign,” perpetuating exclusion, forced displacement, and intractable violence.

This situation becomes more complicated when international actors—whether through peacekeeping missions, humanitarian interventions, or the political economy of refugee crises—reinforce local power dynamics in ways that obscure root causes. Coulibaly stressed that the shifting of narrative roles, such that victims are named perpetrators and local solutions are delegitimized, is a central driver of conflict and inertia. The core, she argued, is the lack of African ownership in framing and addressing such problems, necessitating a deliberate takingback of discourse and agency.

H.E. Adama Dieng provided a sobering analysis of the feedback loops among insecurity, identity crises, and marginalisation in African borderlands. He highlighted that security is not a discrete technical challenge but is fundamentally intertwined with social recognition, access to resources, and legitimacy. Marginalization of ethnic minorities and borderland populations—often deprived of education, infrastructure, and healthcare—creates the conditions for identity-based conflict and fuels instability far beyond the margins themselves. Dieng called for precisely the kind of holistic and courageous rethinking that had shaped the ISCA conference: one capable of revisiting not just boundaries but also the paradigms of national sovereignty, identity, and the meaning of security itself. He lamented that, while Africa is often described as “the richest continent,” political fragmentation and elite indifference perpetuate division and immobilism. For Dieng, integration projects risk failure if they overlook the lived experiences and aspirations of marginalized communities in border zones.

Andrew Mwenda advanced the discussion by challenging the idea that African borders are simply artificial in the same sense as other borders worldwide. Unlike Europe or Asia, he argued, Africa’s borders lack the legitimizing history of wars, negotiations, and state-formation from the inside out. Instead, they remain foreign constructs, maintained by international law
rather than organic social contracts. Africa’s states, he noted, did not arise from internalbargains or shared military struggle; as a consequence, the institutions of governance, law, and sovereignty themselves often feel extraneous, suspended above society and unmoored from the aspirations or consent of populations. The crisis of legitimacy, for Mwenda, is thus not just about boundaries on a map, but about the ontological question of statehood—whose interests are served, whose voices are heard, and who gets to define the national “we.” Echoing the critique of ideological hegemony, Mwenda observed that African leadership, law, governance models, and even the language of rights and development remain captive to imported ideas, inhibiting genuine endogenous political and social evolution.