Rethinking ‘farmer–herder’ conflicts in the Ivorian internal frontier

Abstract

There is a heightened concern among the media, United Nations (UN) agencies, and security experts about the rising number of localized conflicts in West Africa. While many of these conflicts are labelled as farmer–herder conflicts, they are, in fact, more complex and multidimensional. This article demonstrates as much for the Ivorian case by building on the concept of the internal frontier in West African rural institutions. Population mobility has been central to state policies and practices towards the internal frontier in order to optimize conditions for economic growth and capital accumulation. Drawing on the case of Bouna, Côte d’Ivoire in 2016, this article argues that the conflict is driven by a reconfiguration of local social orders, whereby the state’s internal frontier logic faces a crisis due to the ideological contradictions between capital accumulation and autochthony.