Herders without borders: transhumance securitisation and the challenges of national security in Ghana and Nigeria

Abstract

As an enduring agricultural practice in Africa, transboundary herding has remained a major source of conflict among agro-land users, especially between the Fulani nomadic pastoralists and peasant farmers/host communities. Although extant studies broadly agree that this herding practice is prone to violence, the actual factors which predispose this agricultural practice to violence vary across studies, ranging from climate change and environmental security, population growth and urbanisation, manipulation of cultural and ethnic identities, insecurity in the Lake Chad area, to the free movement of persons and goods protocols. However, these studies have glossed over how the securitisation of transhumance contributes to the conflict between nomadic herders and peasant farmers in West Africa—which is the focus of the present study. Data for this study were sourced from documentary evidence, including scholarly literature, media reports, and official documents from relevant protocols of the Economic Community of West African States. Relying on the basic assumptions of securitisation theory, the study found that transhumance securitisation as a default state response strategy against agro-land use conflicts between nomadic herders and peasant farmers has become counterproductive in West Africa.