Can Redrawing the Map "Fix" Africa?

When I talk to people who’ve never been to Africa, there’s sometimes a tendency to treat the continent as a dysfunctional object. I’ll get asked questions about ethnic conflict and corruption, and I’ll get the 30-second warning that Africa is ceasing to hold my interlocutor’s attention: “Well, what do you think it will take to fix it?” Which is exactly the same thing I said last time I had to have my slowly-dying hard drive replaced.

“Undoing colonialism might be nice,” I occasionally quip. Of course that’s impossible, and of course contemporary problems in Africa aren’t as simple as, “the white man showed up and screwed it all up, forever.”

So it’s a delicate thing to discuss suggestions like this one, which propose redrawing African borders to “fix” Africa. G. Pascal Zachary, no stranger to the continent, says, “No initiative would do more for happiness, stability, and economic growth in Africa today than an energetic and enlightened redrawing of these harmful lines.”

You probably already know the idea: that the borders divide ethnic groups and communities, sliced up trade routes and cattle paths, and otherwise “balkanized” African life. The implication is that were it not for all of those arbitrary divisions, African states would function more like…well, like European states.

I’m not so sure. First, who does the “enlightened redrawing” and how do you arbitrate territory disputes? The Ethiopian-Eritrean border war, in which 100,000 soldiers died over a dusty border town of virtually no economic significance, suggests this a question worth a few pre-cartography roundtables.

Second, how do we know that the “failure” of African states is due to their diversity? There are some states where multiple ethnic groups can be a bit of a problem — think DR Congo — but there are other states that manage that diversity pretty well, like Sierra Leone.

But the biggest problem with this idea is it changes the players, but not the game. Whatever the borders, we expect African nation-states to behave like our own Westphalian nation-states. I suppose global interaction, let alone cooperation, requires we all have a basic agreement about the state system in which we operate.

But whatever the borders, the notion of a nation-state Zachary posits is one that outsiders forced on the continent, usually violently, more than 100 years ago. I’m guessing that passing the pen now isn’t going to magically solve the problem.

Photo Credit: Edu-tourist