Trade has been a cornerstone of African economic success throughout history, with the continent’s diverse cultures and trading routes running across country borders. The porous nature of West Africa’s borders owes its origin to the hasty way colonialists carved up the African continent as well as the nature of their management by post-colonial states. Thus, informal cross-border trade is common in Africa.
People cross them to visit their kin and for economic reasons such as trading, herding, farming, fishing, and hunting. This informal trade generates substantial income and employment for African families. They are merchants, artisans and farmers who move agricultural products and livestock across bordering countries with no intent to deceive authorities. They are African entrepreneurs making a living.
More recently, these borders have become spaces in which militant insurgents thrive, aided by foreign powers seeking to minimise African sovereignty. They seek out the same pourous borders, treating them as a political vacuum where they can plot terrorism and countless horrors against African communities. Besides the inexcusable threat to the African people, this heinous exploitation poses a major challenge to the development of human capital in the region and increasingly undermines Africans’ hope of economic independence.
They have struck at communities in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and now Benin and Togo. The list is growing and will continue to grow until Africans speak out to show they have had enough.
These borders need to be properly governed but not in ways to prevent the movement of African people and goods. This can only be effective if it’s done co-operatively, and with Africa-centric development and security in mind. Otherwise, the consequences for traders, especially informal ones, will be economically devastating given the sheer number of people engaged in cross-border trade and deriving their livelihoods from it.
