country: SIERRA LEONE.

Africa’s renewed push to turn contested borders into instruments of cooperation rather than conflict has gained fresh momentum following the historic boundary demarcation completed on Lake Kariba between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The installation of floating boundary buoys there marks the first operational demarcation of an international boundary on a lake anywhere on the continent, achieved through cooperation between the two governments, the African Union Border Programme and the German Federal Foreign Office, implemented on the ground by Germany’s development agency GIZ. Beyond the technical achievement, the initiative stands as proof that African states can resolve inherited colonial boundary disputes through dialogue, shared institutions and mutual respect rather than confrontation, a model the AU has described as transforming borders from barriers into bridges.

That model carries direct weight for Sierra Leone and Guinea, whose own border has remained a source of periodic tension for decades, most visibly around the disputed village of Yenga. The two countries have kept the process of resolution alive through the Joint Technical Commission for the Reaffirmation of the Sierra Leone and Guinea Border, whose third session convened in Kailahun in March 2025 saw both delegations formally present and categorise their supporting border documents into legal, administrative and cartographic evidence, a process likewise backed by GIZ under the African Union Border Programme. Sierra Leone’s delegation, led by the Chief of Staff at the Office of National Security, Francis Langumba Keili, welcomed a Guinean team headed by Moriba Magassouba, the National Director of Public Liberties and Borders, in a session both sides described as a demonstration of shared commitment to peace and social cohesion along the frontier.

That commitment was reaffirmed at the highest political level in March 2026, when the Presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone met in Conakry for a tripartite summit on border cooperation, pledging to resolve all outstanding border issues through peaceful diplomatic means under Article 33 of the United Nations Charter and to revive the Mano River Union as a vehicle for regional dialogue. Taken together with the Lake Kariba precedent, the Sierra Leone and Guinea process shows that borders drawn without African input during the colonial era need not remain permanent flashpoints. Where technical patience, African-led institutions and political will converge, as they have on the shores of Lake Kariba and along the Mano River, the continent is demonstrating that its inherited boundaries can become foundations for unity rather than division.

PHOTO SOURCE: AI GENERATED