Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:25:29.153Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The green, the grey and the blue: a typology of cross-border trade in Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Gregor Dobler
Gregor Dobler*
Affiliation:
University of Freiburg, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Werthmannstr. 10, D-79085 Freiburg, Germany
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What are the reasons for the extraordinary dynamism of many African border regions? Are there specificities to African borderlands? The article provides answers to these questions by analysing the historical development of African state borders’ social and economic relevance. It presents a typology of cross-border trade in Africa, differentiating trade across the ‘green’ border of bush paths and villages, the ‘grey’ border of roads, railways and border towns, and the ‘blue’ border of transport corridors to oceans and airports. The three groups of actors associated with these types of trade have competing visions of the ideal border regime, to which many dynamics in African cross-border politics can be traced back. The article contributes to African studies by analysing diverging political and economic developments in African countries through the lens of the border, and to border theory by distilling general features of borders and borderlands from African case studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 145 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This article is an outcome of years of discussions and exchange with my colleagues and friends in the African Borderlands Research Network ABORNE. They are too numerous to name here. Kate Meagher, Paul Nugent and Wolfgang Zeller have at various points changed my understanding of borderlands. I presented earlier versions of this article in Lisbon, Bayreuth and Joensuu, and I thank all participants for valuable input. Daniel Bach, Katharina Heitz Tokpa, Rita Kesselring, Olivia Klimm and Olivier Walther read drafts; their comments, just as those of the two anonymous reviewers, have provided crucial feedback and allowed me to make the article much better. My original research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG.

References

REFERENCES

Akiyama, T., Baffes, J., Larson, D.F. & Varangis, P.. 2003. ‘Commodity market reform in Africa: some recent experience’, Economic Systems 27, 1: 83–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J. & O'Dowd, L.. 1999. ‘Borders, border region and territoriality: contradictory meanings, changing significance’, Regional Studies 33, 7: 593–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asiwaju, A. 1976. Western Yorubaland Under European Rule: a comparative analysis of French and British colonialism. New York, NY: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Asiwaju, A. & Nugent, P., eds. 1996. African Boundaries: barriers, conduits and opportunities. Edinburgh: University Press.Google Scholar
Austin, G. 2008. ‘Resources, techniques and strategies South of the Sahara: revising the factor endowments perspective on African economic development, 1500–2001’, Economic History Review 61, 3: 587–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bach, D., ed. 1999. Regionalization in Africa: integration and disintegration. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Baud, M. & van Schendel, W.. 1997. ‘Towards a comparative history of borderlands’, Journal of World History 8, 2: 211–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, B. 1990. Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The dialectics of domination. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Berman, B. 1998. ‘Ethnicity, patronage and the African state: the politics of uncivil nationalism’, African Affairs 97, 388: 305–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierschenk, Th. & Olivier de Sardan, J.-P., eds. 2014. States at Work. Dynamics of African bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, M. 2015. The Politics of Conflict Economies: miners, merchants and warriors in the African borderland. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boyrie, M., Nelson, J. & Pak, S.. 2007. ‘Capital movement through trade misinvoicing: the case of Africa’, Journal of Financial Crime 14, 4: 474–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulir, A. 2002. ‘Can price incentive to smuggle explain the contraction of the Cocoa supply in Ghana?’, Journal of African Economics 11, 3: 413–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2001. ‘Border zone trade and the economic boundaries of the state in North-East Ghana’, Africa 71, 2: 202–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2010a. ‘Recasting maritime governance in Ghana: the neo-developmental state and the Port of Tema.’ Journal of Modern African Studies 48, 8: 573–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2010b. Neoliberal Frontiers: an ethnography of sovereignty in West Africa. Chicago, IL: University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2015. ‘Governing offshore oil: mapping maritime political space in Ghana and the Western Gulf of Guinea’, South Atlantic Quarterly 114, 1:101–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, F. 2002. Africa since 1940: the past of the present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coplan, D. 2012. ‘Border show business and performing states’, in Wilson, Th. & Donnan, H., eds. Blackwell Companion to Border Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 507–21.Google Scholar
Das, V. & Poole, D., eds. 2004. Anthropology at the Margins of the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Decoville, A., Durand, F., Sohn, C. & Walther, O.. 2013. ‘Comparing cross-border metropolitan integration in Europe: towards a functional typology’, Journal of Borderlands Studies 28, 2: 221–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobler, G. 2008a. ‘Boundary-drawing and the notion of territoriality in pre-colonial and early colonial Ovamboland’, Journal of Namibian Studies 3: 7–30.Google Scholar
Dobler, G. 2008b. ‘From Scotch whisky to Chinese sneakers: international commodity flows and trade networks in Oshikango, Namibia’, Africa 78, 3: 410–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobler, G. 2009a. ‘Oshikango: the dynamics of growth and regulation in a Northern Namibian boom town’, Journal of Southern African Studies 35, 1: 115–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobler, G. 2009b. ‘Chinese shops and the formation of a Chinese expatriate community in Namibia’, The China Quarterly 199, 707–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobler, G. 2009c. ‘On the border to chaos: identity formation on the Angolan-Namibian border, 1927–2008’, Journal of Borderland Studies 25, 2: 22–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobler, G. 2012. ‘Private vices, public benefits? Small-town bureaucratization in Namibia’, in Peters, A. & Handschin, L., eds. Conflict of Interest in Global, Public, and Corporate Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 217–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doevenspeck, M. 2011. ‘Constructing the border from below: narratives from the Congolese–Rwandan state boundary’, Political Geography 30, 3: 129–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egg, J. & Herrera, J.. 1998. ‘Échanges transfrontaliers et integration régionale en Afrique subsaharienne: introduction’, Autrepart 6: 5–27.Google Scholar
Elden, S. 2013. The Birth of Territory. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emirbayer, M. & Mische, A.. 1998. ‘What is agency?’, American Journal of Sociology 103, 4: 962–1023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyissa, D. & Hoehne, M.. 2010. Borders and Borderlands as Resources in the Horn of Africa. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Golub, S. 2015. ‘Informal cross-border trade and smuggling in Africa’, in Morrissey, O., López, R.A. & Sharma, K., eds. Handbook on Trade and Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 179–209.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1971. Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hagmann, T. & Péclard, D.. 2010. ‘Negotiating statehood: dynamics of power and domination in Africa’, Development and Change 41, 4: 539–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagmann, T. & Korf, B.. 2012. ‘Agamben in the Ogaden: violence and sovereignty in the Ethiopian–Somali frontier’, Political Geography 31, 4: 205–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heilbrunn, J. 2014. Oil, Democracy and Development in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, J. 2000. States and Power in Africa: comparative lessons in authority and control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Howard, A. 2014. ‘Cross-boundary traders in the era of high imperialism: changing structures and strategies in the Sierra Leone-Guinea region’, articulo 10. <http://articulo.revues.org/2535>.Google Scholar
Iheduru, O. Forthcoming. ‘Organized business and regional integration in Africa’, Review of International Political Economy. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1011191.Google Scholar
Jackson, S. 2006. ‘Borderlands and the transformation of war economies: lessons from the DR Congo’, Conflict, Security and Development 6, 3: 425–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, R. 2009. ‘Categories, borders and boundaries’, Progress in Human Geography 33: 174–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, R. 2012. ‘Performativity and the eventfulness of bordering practices’, in Wilson, Th. & Donnan, H., eds. Blackwell Companion to Border Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 522–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayizzi-Mugerwa, S., Anyanwu, J. & Conceicao, P.. 2014. ‘Regional integration in Africa: an introduction’, African Development Review 26, S1: 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kopytoff, I. 1987. The African Frontier: the reproduction of traditional African societies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Korf, B. & Raeymaekers, T., eds. 2013. Violence on the Margins: state, conflict, and borderlands. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, C.K. 2014. ‘The spectre of global China’, New Left Review 89: 29–65.Google Scholar
Lefèbvre, H. 1974. La production de l'espace. Paris: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Lentz, C. 2014. Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Little, P. 2010. ‘Unofficial cross-border trade in Eastern Africa’, in Sarris, A. & Morrison, J., eds. Food Security in Africa: market and trade policy for staple foods in Eastern and Southern Africa. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 158–81.Google Scholar
Martinez, O. 1994. ‘The dynamics of border interaction. New approaches to border analysis’, in Schofield, C., ed. Global boundaries. London: Routledge, 1–15.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, J. 1991. The Real Economy of Zaire: the contribution of smuggling and other unofficial activities to national wealth. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Meagher, K. 2014. ‘Smuggling ideologies: from criminalization to hybrid governance in African clandestine economies’, African Affairs 113, 453: 497–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mevel, S., Vakataki‘Ofa, S. & Karingi, S.. 2014. ‘Illicit financial flows, trade mispricing, and their impact on African economies’, in Elhiraika, A.B., Mukungu, A.C.K. & Nyoike, W., eds. Regional Integration and Policy Challenges in Africa. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 220–52.Google Scholar
Miescher, G. 2012. Namibia's Red Line: the history of a veterinary fence. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miles, W. 1994. Hausaland divided: colonialism and independence in Nigeria and Niger. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Miles, W. 2014. Scars of Partition: postcolonial legacies in French and British borderlands. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moseley, W., Carney, J. & Becker, L.. 2010. ‘Neoliberal policy, rural livelihoods, and urban food security in West Africa: a comparative study of The Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Mali’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107, 13: 5774–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mühlmann, W. & Llaryora, R.. 1968. Klientschaft, Klientel und Klientelsystem in einer sizilianischen Agro-Stadt. Tübingen: Mohr/ Siebeck.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 2002. Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: the lie of the borderlands since 1914. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 2008. ‘Border anomalies: the role of local actors in shaping spaces along the Gambia-Senegal and Ghana-Togo borders’, in Bellagamaba, A. & Klute, G., eds. Beside the State: emergent powers in contemporary Africa. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 128–38.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 2012. ‘Border towns and cities in comparative perspective’, in Wilson, Th. & Donnan, H., eds. Blackwell Companion to Border Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 557–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. 2008. Researching the Practical Norms of Real Governance in Africa. London: ODI.Google Scholar
Popitz, H. 1992. Phänomene der Macht. Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck.Google Scholar
Raeymaekers, T. 2009. ‘The silent encroachment of the frontier: politics of transborder trade in the Semliki Valley (Congo-Uganda)’, Political Geography 28, 1: 55–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raeymaekers, T. 2012a. ‘African boundaries and the new capitalist frontier’, in Wilson, Th. & Donnan, H., eds. Blackwell Companion to Border Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 318–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raeymaekers, T. 2012b. ‘Reshaping the state in its margins: the state, the market and the subaltern on a Central African frontier’, Critique of Anthropology 32, 3: 334–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhard, W. 1999. Geschichte der Staatsgewalt. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Roitman, J. 2005. Fiscal Disobedience: An anthropology of economic regulation in Central Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schütz, A. & Luckmann, Th. 2003. Strukturen der Lebenswelt. Konstanz: UTB.Google Scholar
Soares de Oliveira, R. 2007. Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Soares de Oliveira, R. 2015. Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola since the civil war. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Söderbaum, F. 2004. ‘Modes of regional governance in Africa: neoliberalism, sovereignty boosting, and shadow networks’, Global Governance 10, 4: 419–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Söderbaum, F. & Taylor, I.. 2001. ‘Transmission belt for transnational capital or facilitator for development? Problematising the role of the state in the Maputo Development Corridor’, Journal of Modern African Studies 39, 4: 675–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Söderbaum, F. & Taylor, I., eds. 2008. Afro-Regions: the dynamics of cross-border micro-regionalism in Africa. Uppsala: NAI.Google Scholar
Storey, D. 2012. Territories: the claiming of space. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thünen, W. 1842–63. Der isolirte Staat. Rostock: Leopold.Google Scholar
Titeca, K. 2012. ‘Tycoons and contraband: informal cross-border trade in West Nile, north-western Uganda’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 6, 1: 47–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titeca, K. & de Herdt, T.. 2010. ‘Regulation, cross-border trade and practical norms in West Nile, north-western Uganda’, Africa 80, 4: 573–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titeca, K. & Flynn, R.. 2014. ‘‘Hybrid governance’, legitimacy and (il)legality in the informal cross-border trade in Panyimur, Northwest Uganda’, African Studies Review 57, 1: 71–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughan, C., Schomerus, M. & de Vries, L., eds. 2013. The Borderlands of South Sudan: authority and identity in contemporary and historical perspectives. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walther, O. 2014a. ‘Border markets: an introduction’, Articulo 10. <http://articulo.revues.org/2532>.Google Scholar
Walther, O. 2014b. ‘Trade networks in West Africa: a social network approach’, Journal of Modern African Studies 52, 2: 179–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeller, W. 2008. ‘Danger and opportunity in Katima Mulilo: a Namibian border boomtown at transnational crossroads’, Journal of Southern African Studies 35, 1: 133–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeller, W. 2015. What Makes Borders Real: in the Namibia–Zambia and Uganda–South Sudan borderlands. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar