Article |
The Anglophone Cameroon-Nigeria boundary: Opportunities and conflicts
Piet Konings is a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands
Abstract
Recent studies of African boundaries have tended to focus either on the growing number of border disputes between states or on frontier regions that are said to offer local inhabitants a wide range of economic opportunities. This article attempts to combine both approaches and to demonstrate the ambiguous nature of the Anglophone Cameroon-Nigeria border. On the one hand, the border has been subject to regular skirmishes between Cameroon and Nigeria, culminating in a protracted war over the sovereignty of the Bakassi peninsula — an area rich in oil reserves. On the other hand, it has for historical and economic reasons never constituted a real barrier to cross-border movements of labour and goods. The large Nigerian migrant community in Anglophone Cameroon, in particular, has been able to benefit from formal and informal cross-border trade for a long time. Unsurprisingly, its dominant position in the host community's commercial sector has been a continuous source of conflict.