Paper long abstract:

Borders and their management have long been thorny issue on the African continent. Broadly speaking, borders are either seen as barriers or as bridges. This paper explores the contrast between the two different border-ideologies that both have their protagonist in academic and policy circles. On the one hand, there are those who perceive borders as potential bridges, propagating open borders, lower administrative burdens and the free movement of people. This group, dominated by civil society organisations and international NGOs, sees African cross-border cooperation and regional integration as an opportunity for development. The African Union Border Programme (AUBP) is an important result of this 'borders as bridges' agenda. The second perspective sees borders as useful barriers that need to be controlled and is dominated by protagonists of the narrative of national borders as a security concern. Sensitivities surrounding border management strongly influence relations between nations. I will explore the tensions and divergences between policy and research in border management based on working experience with an NGO on cross-border cooperation across Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, and social-anthropological research on the borderlands of South Sudan, DR Congo and Uganda. I argue that rather than searching for explanations on why policy-oriented research risks to be ineffective, we ought to look at those interests and institutions that ultimately pull the strings in border management. Although African national security sensitivities differ from the EU's politics of securitization, the interests converge in the current discourses on global security, which leads to the marginalisation of the open-borders ideology. The challenge, therefore, is not to bridge policy and research on African border management, but instead, to find a middle ground in which both border-ideologies co-exist.