Much of Africa’s 83,000 kilometres of borders run through sparsely inhabited territories where state services are scant and state authority is stretched. Pastoralists have been traversing these territories since long before formal borders came into existence.
Pastoral mobility cuts across political boundaries, jurisdictions and authorities, and though they usually do so with a high degree of cooperative engagement between local communities, they can also encounter and become enmeshed in different manifestations of borderland violence – from criminality to human rights violations, armed insurgency and inter-community fighting.
Part 1
Key findings and priorities for peace and security
Part 2
East Africa case study
Karamoja–Turkana community research: ‘Peace is not the absence of crime, but how crime is dealt with’
East Africa case study contributors
Part 3
West Africa case study
Transhumant herders in the borderlands of Nigeria and the Chad Basin: Patterns of insecurity and priorities for peace
West Africa case study written by Adam Higazi
Adam Higazi is a researcher with two decades of experience in West and Central Africa. He is an ethnographer working among pastoralists and farmers in rural areas of central and northern Nigeria and in Niger Republic and Cameroon. His academic background is in geography, anthropology, development studies, and botany, with a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2011. He held post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge University and the University of Amsterdam and has published in leading African studies journals and edited volumes. Higazi has also worked for the UN and NGOs on peacebuilding and conflict analysis and on biodiversity conservation. He is a research affiliate at Modibbo Adama University Yola – Adamawa State, Nigeria – and of the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam.
Edited by Conciliation Resources and the Institute of Development Studies.
This Accord Insight publication was produced by Conciliation Resources under the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, funded by UK International Development. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Conciliation Resources. Opinions expressed by all contributors are their own.
