Frontier energetics: The value of pastoralist border crossings in eastern africa

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the history of boundary-making in two frontier settings in Eastern Africa and on the everyday trans-border dynamics that arise out of the mobile nature of pastoral land use and territoriality. Do pastoral movements across frontiers question the integrity of national borders and the capacity of states to defend their frontiers and govern trans-border populations, or do they confirm the advantages of enhancing flows of people and goods between states, validating the continuation of mobility by other means? Frontiers were drawn in Eastern Africa in dry, lowland rangelands inhabited by pastoral or agro-pastoral peoples that lie between highland regions where colonial states were localized and capitals created. The metaphor of entropy suggests that by blocking free flows of people, livestock or goods, borders create potential social, political and economic energy. Borders protect frontier opportunities; nomads cross frontiers not to challenge but to secure some blessings from the state. This chapter describes the history and current dynamics along the Kenyan and Ethiopian and Kenyan and Tanzania borders to illustrate how frontier energetics work. From the inception, demarcation and consolidation of national boundaries to processes of trans-boundary flows, trans-border people both recognize the line and profit from it.