Transnational political violence in African borderlands

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between borderlands and political violence in Africa. Using spatiotemporal data on conflict events from 1997 to 2024 alongside the innovative OECD Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi), it suggests that borderlands see more conflict than non-borderlands. Political violence tends to decrease very rapidly with the distance to borders in Africa. The share of violent events recorded in borderlands varies over time and mirrors the cycles of violence that affect specific regions. It was very high in the early 2000s due to the wars in the Gulf of Guinea and Great Lakes region, declined for less than a decade, and increased substantially in the 2010s. Finally, the paper shows that when conflicts diffuse across borders, they tend to occupy a greater spatial extent, rather than relocate from one side of the border to the other.