Redrawing the Map of Africa?

This chapter focuses on the state as defined in the traditional international relations sense, that is, as a territorial entity. Many scholars attribute the credit for boundary "maintenance" to the emergence of an African state system and its institutionalization in the Organization of African Unity. The predominance of crude dependency and world systems approaches in the study of Africa&s;s international economic relations has led to the international system being accorded an overdeterministic role at the expense of internal factors. In the Southern African region economic crisis has facilitated South Africa&s;s destabilization actions against neighboring countries, most notably Mozambique. The chapter suggests that the capacity of the African state system to sustain inherited boundaries was the product of a fortuitous conjunction of circumstances. Growing disparities in capabilities become important when there are obvious opportunities to project power. There are a number of factors which may increasingly tempt African countries to intervene beyond their existing borders.

Geography · African Studies and Geopolitics · History