Having worked on conflict-related ecosystems across the region for many years, we are turning our attention to the complexities and risks of Africa’s often-troubled border-zones. We’ve been working with clients and communities wrestling with tough questions such as;

• How can the resilience of borderlands communities be understood, and strengthened?
• How do networks for human trafficking operate across borders?
• How do violent extremist organisations exploit borderlands communities?
• What is the role of government in facilitating stronger relationships between communities and their states?
• What is the impact of border functionality on borderlands communities?

To date, our work has involved exploratory research and community engagement across the border zones of East Africa, helping to deepen understanding and generate new ways to work with local complexities.

Understanding how best to work with complex borderlands regions is difficult but vital work. Here we take a systems-based perspective to put forward some of what we see as the key area necessary to examine more deeply.

Shared understanding: An array of partial, and conflicting perspectives

Our experience is that one of the real problems of border regions is so many actors with so many perspectives and views that are partial and conflicting. Critical questions to explore more deeply must include:

• What is the quality of shared understanding?
• Are people focussed on understanding the symptoms or the deeper issues?
• Where are the gaps?

Securing Commitment: The struggle of securing genuine commitment

With so many actors, and interests at play, it is extremely difficult to secure any real commitment to tackling specific problems. Perhaps the opportunity here is to galvanise commitment around smaller, more discrete problems (such as violent extremism). When we look at issues of commitment across border systems;
Do we see collective ownership?
What are the levels of inclusion and participation in understanding and tackling the problem?
Are there mandates, owners and champions of change?
Are the mechanisms to drive accountability?
Are there positive examples in some regions worth citing?

Changing the Dynamics: Diverse interventions, but what works at scale?

Borderlands interventions vary considerably in scope, scale and ambition, however:

• Are they iterative, adaptive, contextually tailored enough?
• Are there opportunities for scaling what works that are not being looked at?
• How well integrated are they with other activities?

Enabling Coordination: Established platforms need to drive collaborative action.

With regard to the array of challenges faced by borderlands communities:

• What is the need for and quality of coordination structures, mechanisms, processes both horizontally (i.e. between county – security – trade – community actors) and vertically (e.g. between community – county – national).
• Where and how are things siloed?
• What are the incentives? What are the power structures and how are they manipulated by elites?

Augmenting Learning: Information flows need to reach frontline change-makers.

Feedback loops in such complex regions are often distorted, delayed or altogether absent;

• What is being done to understand this problem better?
• How effective are these processes? Are they serving those on the front lines?