DISCUSS BORDERS IN AFRICA DIFFERENTLY STORIES, IMAGINATIONS AND ALTERITY IN THE BORDERLANDS BETWEEN CAMEROON AND NIGERIA

Abstract

Many studies have been devoted in recent years to the border studies in Africa, particularly on the issue of historical conditions for the constitution of borders; border disputes; illegal migrations; cross-border crime; cross-border cooperation; flow control; the militarization of borders; the rise of shipwrecks and sub-Saharan migrations at the gates of Europe. Admittedly, this research is interesting, but it has remained mostly limited to the geographical and material dimension of the border. A border is not only limited to a line, a barrier, a checkpoint or a political construction and the result of a balance of power that was resolved in a negotiated or conflictual manner. Beyond it’s socio-cultural, political and economic animation by human groups, it is also important to note that the influences of political events, the nature of interstate relations affect the imaginations of these populations settled in the borderlands in relation to the border. Based on an ethnographic approach carried out from the 2010 s until July 2018 and the collection of primary and secondary data in some cross-border areas between Cameroon and Nigeria, it is a question in this analytical framework of scrutinizing the mental geography of these human societies before colonization relative to the border, then to show how the "clash of civilizations" with the colonial order upset the African borders providing a vision of the world. From another perspective, there is a heuristic interest that is raised in this discussion, that of discussing how the mental images of the local populations settled in these borderlands have acted, interacted and varied in relation to these geopolitical spaces marked essentially by globalization and its consequences. geopolitical and geostrategic changes.