The (Mis)Invention of Central Africa

Yet, conflating Africa’s principle with uti possidetis obscures important differences. The African principle is broader and more political: it prescribes neither how a border must be drawn nor how disputes should be resolved; it simply forbids the forcible alteration of borders and obliges states to settle disagreements peacefully. Moreover, only a minority of African borders resulted from a single colonial power’s internal administrative line; many were products of bilateral treaties between rival empires. In Central Africa, French, Belgian, German, British, Spanish and Portuguese claims intersected and overlapped.

The practical effect, nonetheless, was to freeze the colonial map. Stability was purchased at an exorbitant price: 54 dysfunctional rump states. Borders that split ethnic groups created permanent minorities whose loyalty was always suspect; landlocked states depend on the goodwill of neighbours for port access; and infrastructure networks designed to extract resources toward imperial metropoles (with Beijing supplanting Paris and London) run parallel to borders rather than across them, fragmenting regional economies. From 2009 to 2011, according to the World Bank, these divisions cost Africa up to two per cent of annual growth, a figure magnified by climate shocks and migratory pressures.

To grasp possible paths toward reconfiguration, let us examine the process that unified the German states in the 19th century. This comparison is not trivial. Collectively, the five Central African territories—Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe and Cabinda—encompass approximately 645,000 km², larger than modern Germany and comparable to the 1871 German Empire, though their combined population of roughly ten million falls far short of the approximately 41 million unified by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Like the 39-state German confederation, these are small, individually fragile polities. Additionally, the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) bloc and the shared CFA franc already provide an economic integration framework analogous to the Zollverein customs union that preceded German unification.

The German case is not a model to be mechanically replicated in Africa. Still, it shows how economic integration, diplomatic manoeuvres, and ultimately war can combine to transform a fragmented political landscape into a single state. Before unification on 8 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, the German world comprised 39 states, from kingdoms like Prussia and Bavaria to tiny principalities and free cities, sharing a language and culture but divided by tariffs, currencies, legal systems and dynastic loyalties. The first step toward unity came not through political revolution but through economic integration: the Zollverein of 1834, a Prussian-initiated customs union that abolished internal trade barriers and established a common external tariff. Crucially, most German states joined, but Austria, the dominant German-speaking power, remained apart to protect its markets. Over three decades, the Zollverein wove the German economies together, spurring industrial growth, railways and a single market, and bred a bourgeois nationalism—its merchants seeing themselves as actors in one German economy rather than subjects of separate princes.