Introduction

Africa is the most partitioned continent in the world. Boundaries in Africa were drawn by colonial powers to a greater extent than on any other continent. There is no African equivalent to the dominant role played by the indigenous state of China in Asian boundary-making. Many boundary agreements dealing with Africa contained clauses which allowed the demarcation teams to vary the delimited line if local circumstances made such deviations appropriate. For example, the following latitude was given to surveyors in the Anglo-German agreement of 1910 dealing with the boundary between Uganda. An earlier article on Africa's problems likened Africa's boundaries to the old wine skins into which the new wine of African nationalism had been poured. Boundary problems also offer an opportunity for international co-operation, and it is evident that in the first half of the 1980s there is an increasing tendency for African states to settle boundary problems through peaceful negotiation and compromise.