African Borderlands Research Network - Aborne

West African countries are fortifying their borders

The resurgence of fortified landscapes in West Africa - African Networks Lab West African states respond to insurgencies by building city walls and fortifying borders, balancing protection with rural vulnerabilities.

In this new blog, ABORNE Olivier Walther and Steven Radil argue that, far from being limited to serving as a refuge or transit zone for armed groups, borderlands provide the resources necessary for the development of unique trajectories of violence that can spread across countries over long periods of time.

Why African Borderlands Keep Burning | African Arguments Africa’s margins have become its main theatre of violence. From the Great Lakes region to the Sahel, armed groups exploit borderlands as safe havens and logistics hubs.

Professor Inocent Moyo from the University of Zululand was awarded a Research Chair in Borders and the African Free Trade Area.

The new position is funded by the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) designed to strengthen research excellence, build postgraduate capacity, and position South African universities as leaders in strategic areas of knowledge production https://www.unizulu.ac.za/unizulu-strengthens-its-research-footprint-with-two-new-sarchi-research-chairs/

Congratulations, Dr. Moyo!

Members of ABORNE! Renew your annual membership today to remain on our mailing list and attend our annual meeting in Lagos in August.

Online payments can now be made via PayPal through this link: https://www.aborne.net/take-action

Thanks again for your continued support!

ABORNISTAS! The call for papers for the 2026 ABORNE annual meeting in Lagos, Nigeria, has been extended to February 28, 2026. We look forward to receiving your submission! More information at https://www.aborne.net/2026-conference-in-lagos

The deadline to submit an abstract to the 2026 ABORNE Annual Meeting in Lagos is 15 February 2026! The topic of the conference is “The Connected Borderlands, Socio-Cultural Integration, and the Centrality of Policy, Research and Security”. More information is available on https://www.aborne.net/2026-conference-in-lagos

NEW BOOK on One Stop Border Posts - Enforcing the Line. An Ethnography of the Kenyan Border Regime, by ABORNE Katrin Sowa https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-98018-3

OPEN ACCESS BOOK - African Thresholds: Borders and Places of Passage in Africa, c.1450 to Present, edited by Ettore Morelli https://brill.com/display/title/72020