This paper is an extract of a longer paper taking stock of the roughly 40 X-Border studies carried
out between 2019 and 2025 under the auspices of the Rift Valley Institute’s XCEPT programme. XCEPT Research Fellow Tobias Hagmann describes an analytical strategy for assessing the similarities and differences across different borderlands.
Making sense of borderlands
If we are to fully grasp conflict dynamics and related phenomena in borderland areas—whether that be in Africa or elsewhere—we must look beyond the region in question. Only then can we hope to understand what is (and is not) particular to that area, and so detect causal patterns.