Roadblocks in Central Africa
Conflicts in Central Africa, it is often said, revolve around control over mining sites. But over five years of research on the political economy of conflict in the DR Congo and Central African Republic establishes a key driver of conflict that is often overlooked: control over roads.
In a new article, DIIS researcher Peer Schouten explores data he collected with research partners from both countries on over 1.000 roadblocks in both countries. In a context where profit is made out of movement, Schouten shows, roadblocks are a key strategy of income generation by armed actors. But beyond sustaining armed mobilization, Schouten finds, roadblocks are also key elements in long-standing patterns of state formation in the region. Before colonial ventures violently took over control of African trade routes, African rulers had forged polities out of control over long-distance trade routes; today again, control over roads is key to understand the vagaries of state formation.
In the Eastern Congo, just two provinces harbor over 800 roadblocks; here, everything that moves is taxed, however little the value, by a panoply of actors, whether attached to the state or rebelling against it. This stands in marked contrast to the Central African Republic, where a total of 300 roadblocks plie the country’s scarce roads. Here, roadblocks are crucial to sustain a limited number of armed groups that use this control to negotiate with the government.
You can explore the roadblocks in the interactive maps that Schouten and partner organization IPIS developed for the research here:
‘Ultimately’, Schouten adds, ‘the new findings of this study point to the promises of cartographic methods to get a better understanding of some of the most complex intractable conflicts of our times’.
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