Market Logics, Checkpoints and Transboundary Formations: The Somali Borderlands

Authors: Nisar Majid, Khalif Abdirahman, Guhad Adan and Juweria Ali

Borders and borderlands are spaces of opportunity and obstacles. Political deals and settlements in such border spaces are often shaped by diverse security, political, and identity-based logics involving an array of actors who operate across multiple scales.

The Somali territories of the Horn of Africa provide such a context, where Ethiopia and Kenya have been deeply intertwined in political and security terms with Somalia over several decades. In the case of Ethiopia, this entanglement developed from the early 1990s, as the rise of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took place alongside Somalia’s emergent political order following state collapse. Kenya’s involvement in Somalia is more recent and has evolved significantly over the last fifteen years, since the rise of Al Shabaab.

This report synthesises several PeaceRep studies pertinent to these border relations and that inform political dynamics across this inter-connected sub-regional space. Understanding this turbulent arena is complex but critical to interpreting peace and conflict trends as well as policy responses.