Duminta Xuduudaha Gumeysiga: Danta Afrika iyo Midnimada Ummadda Soomaaliyeed

Analysis: Africa’s colonial borders still bleed — and Somalia won’t legitimize the 1964 line

Africa’s map was drawn with a ruler, not with consent. The straight-edged boundaries carved at the Berlin Conference and cemented by departing European empires didn’t reflect language, culture, kinship or history. In 1964, seeking to stem a cascade of territorial wars, the Organization of African Unity adopted a doctrine of border sanctity rooted in uti possidetis juris: honor the frontiers inherited at independence. It stabilized the map but calcified injustice for communities like the Somalis — one nation fractured under five flags.

Six decades on, the Horn of Africa is living proof that lines sketched in metropoles still shape conflict, identity and statecraft. As foreign capitals flirt with recognizing secessionist authorities in northern Somalia and as great-power interest intensifies along the Red Sea, Africa faces a defining question: does peace come from doubling down on colonial borders, or from repairing them?

What the OAU tried to solve — and what it entrenched

The OAU’s 1964 Cairo resolution (AHG/Res. 16[I]) anchored Africa’s early-state system in uti possidetis juris, the Latin legal principle that turns administrative borders at independence into international borders. The logic was hard to dismiss: redraw the map and you invite wars without end. For dozens of states with fragile institutions and contested peripheries, noninterference was a shield.

But the cure had side effects. Uti possidetis prioritized cartography over communities, and legality over legitimacy. It did not reckon with multiethnic nations cut apart by empire — a fate that befell Somalis across British, Italian, French, Ethiopian and Kenyan jurisdictions. Somalia famously objected to the principle on those grounds, arguing that self-determination should not stop at the colonial surveyor’s mark. Morocco, confronting a different but related controversy over Western Sahara, also resisted prevailing OAU orthodoxies.

Somalia’s case: one people, five jurisdictions

Few African nations embody the paradox of the 1964 settlement more starkly than the Somalis: a mostly homogenous people by language, culture and faith, dispersed by outsiders’ bargains. The consequences were cumulative and lasting:

• National partition: Somali-inhabited territories were split among Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and two colonial Somalias later fused into the modern Republic of Somalia.
• Recurring conflict: Wars in 1964 and 1977–78, along with chronic border tensions, were inseparable from the inherited map.
• Marginalization across borders: Millions of Somalis have lived as second-class citizens, their rights contingent on politics far from their communities.
• Social and psychological trauma: Families divided, pastoral routes severed, and collective memory scarred by checkpoints that never aligned with life on the ground.

None of this was inevitable. It was a policy choice — by colonial powers first, and by the postcolonial order later — to treat neat lines as a higher good than just communities.

The new temptation: recognition as a shortcut

Today, proposals to recognize a breakaway authority in northern Somalia are framed by some as realism and by others as rectification. In practice, they risk rebranding an old mistake. External powers hinting at recognition — often without African Union consensus, regional buy-in or a negotiated Somali settlement — evoke the spirit, and sometimes the shortcuts, of Berlin 1884–85 more than the lessons of 1964.

Three dynamics sharpen the peril:

• Resources: Northern Somalia is widely believed to be rich in hydrocarbons and minerals. Recognition would immediately reprice those assets — and push corporate and geopolitical actors to lock them up.
• Geostrategy: The Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint have vaulted the Horn into the center of global maritime competition. Ports, bases and shipping lanes drive decisions as much as principles.
• Precedent: Endorsing secession outside an inclusive Somali process would not only harden partition for Somalis; it could electrify other frozen disputes across the continent.

Advocates say recognition brings stability. History counsels skepticism. Where the underlying grievance is a broken colonial inheritance, creating a new border without repairing the old injustice often multiplies claims, litigations and resentments. Recognition is not a development strategy. Nor is it a substitute for political settlement.

Law, legitimacy and the African way

International law balances two imperatives: territorial integrity and self-determination. Africa’s post-1964 consensus emphasized the first to prevent wars. But even the African Union’s normative framework has evolved to recognize that legitimacy, rights and governance failures can’t be papered over by cartography.

If the goal is durable peace in the Horn, three principles should guide policy:

• Do no colonial harm: No external recognition or resource deal should advance without AU and regional consensus, inclusive Somali negotiations, and clear protections for cross-border communities.
• Repair, don’t entrench: Instead of creating new borders, prioritize arrangements that stitch divided societies together — free movement, shared markets, cultural rights and local autonomy where needed.
• Make self-determination practical: The right is richer than a yes/no to secession. It includes language rights, land access, fair representation and the ability to live a dignified life across borders drawn without consent.

A different path for the Horn — and Africa

Somalia’s long-standing refusal to bless the sanctity of colonial borders was not nihilism; it was a demand that law face history. Correcting that history does not require redrawing the entire continent. It requires humility about the map’s origins, creativity in governance, and a commitment to African-led solutions over external fiat.

African states can lead with reforms that are less dramatic than secession but more meaningful than slogans: cross-border grazing compacts; ID regimes that respect pastoral mobility; joint economic zones; and binding guarantees against discrimination for communities split by lines they never chose. These tools have worked in parts of West Africa and the Great Lakes; the Horn deserves no less.

The test of this moment

Calls to “recognize” a piece of Somalia may tempt powers looking for a tidy answer and a timely contract. But tidy answers to colonial problems rarely endure. The recognition that matters most in the Horn is not a new flag; it is a shared commitment to heal a partitioned people.

For Africa, the lesson from 1964 is not that the colonial map was wise, but that peace was urgent. The lesson for 2026 is that justice is urgent too. Stability will last only if it is built on communities whose rights are respected, whose histories are honored and whose futures are not traded for access to minerals or sea lanes.

Honor that, and the borders matter less. Ignore it, and they will always bleed.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.