Legacies: Artificial Borders and the Roots of Decolonization

The African colonial borders resulting from the European partition were drawn predominantly using simple geometric criteria — straight lines of longitude and latitude — or following natural features such as rivers, without systematic consideration of the pre-existing ethnic, linguistic, or political realities of the African populations. Contemporary studies estimate that approximately 44 percent of present-day African borders correspond to purely geometric lines, reflecting the fundamentally cartographic and abstract nature of their original layout. Numerous African ethnic and cultural groups were artificially divided among two or more colonial entities — the Somali people among British Somaliland, Italian Somalia, Ethiopia, and French Djibouti being a paradigmatic case — while other borders grouped together groups with little previous connection, as in Nigeria, whose colonial fusion of Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo peoples contributed directly to the later Biafran Civil War (1967-1970).