ABSTRACT
International boundaries are the most fundamental part of Africa’s colonial inheritance. They define the states of modern Africa which, with very few exceptions, are territorially identical to the European colonies they replaced, for all their grotesque shapes and varied sizes. Africa has about 50,000 miles (80,000km) of international land boundaries which divide the continent into forty-seven independent states plus Western Sahara and the two tiny enclaves of Spanish North Africa. Thus the boundaries fragment or balkanize Africa into many weak, dependent, political units. The Saharan boundaries were resolved largely by straight lines. Divisions internal to the French empire came and went, and some were never even drawn, leaving thorny post-independence problems. The First World War wrought other colonial boundary changes. Jubaland was given by Britain to Italy in 1924 for joining against Germany in 1915.
