What is a border

Just before one drives into my hometown Breman Asikuma, on the right side of the road from Nyakrom, my wife and I own some land, 200 metres into the hilly countryside. This is where we plan to build our retirement home when the children have flown the coop.

I remember clearly the day the land was demarcated and sold to us. We met the owner of the property by the roadside and walked, through somebody’s plantain farm and emerged onto a clearing looking down into a shallow valley. He looked around and asked us how much we had paid. He then pointed to the bottom of the valley. That become one border of our property. He then looked far across and pointed out a palm tree. That become the second corner of our property. A last look and yet another tree assumed the duties of the third corner of our property. Of course where we stood automatically become a corner as well. We all smiled, shook hands and walked off the property, leaving somebody to place pillars in each of the four corners.

127 years ago, in the city of Berlin, on a slightly larger scale, a similar process took place. The continent of Africa was partitioned into various territories under the various European colonial powers. America was invited but for some reason declined to take part. Like us in present day Breman Asikuma, the colonial powers used certain geographical features as well as economic considerations, to arbitrarily divide Africa up amongst themselves.

Our country Ghana is breathtakingly beautiful. A couple of weekends ago I had to drive 300 kilometres north to a little village called Pampawie. I had never been up that part of the country and I couldn’t help admiring the beautiful scenery as I drove through the Volta Region. I also couldn’t help noticing the beautiful green mountain range that, for most of the drive, formed my eastern horizon. And it set me thinking. The Colonial Powers, sitting around the conference table, 127 years ago in Berlin, with a relief map of West Africa spread out before them, must have used geographical features to divide our land up amongst themselves.

In the western part of Ghana, the river Tano flows from Techiman and empties 400km later, into the Aby Lagoon in Côte d'Ivoire. At the Ghanaian town of Fawmang, where it meets a thick forest, the Tano River represents the last few kilometres of the international land boundary between Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

I wonder how present day Ghana would have looked and fared if Germany and France had better negotiators than the British at the Berlin Conference. The Germans would have negotiated that the Volta River would form the eastern border of Ghana and the French could have ensured that the Tano River would be the western border of Ghana. I can imagine the British bargaining and extending the border from the Volta river to the mountain range that formed the beautiful cloud capped eastern horizon on my drive up that part of the country. And likewise to the West, pushing the border from the Tano river to the dense forests that now form most the border with Côte d'Ivoire.

I am sure that most of the negotiators, had probably never visited the beautiful continent of Africa. But as a result of their meeting, tribes, clans, families, and peoples were divided into different countries. Further down the century, with different political and administrative setups by the colonial powers, they developed different second languages, different mindsets, different philosophies, work ethics and value sets. Thankfully though, languages and cultures to a large extent have survived the 127 years since the Berlin Conference.

Which brings me back to the question that comprised the subject matter of this article. What is a border? In my humble opinion, a border is not just an imaginary line drawn on a political map. A border is an imaginary distinction in the minds of millions of peoples of common African Ancestry as a result of the Berlin Conference. An imaginary limit, an imaginary restriction, an imaginary constraint and possibly worst of all, an imaginary horizon placed in the minds of millions of Africans, that has managed to survive 127 years and possibly quite a few more.

On the 5^th of March 1957 AD, when the Gold Coast became Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah declared that the independence of Ghana was meaningless unless it was linked up with the total liberation of the African continent. Kwame Nkrumah was light years ahead of his time. Somehow he managed to discern that the greatest obstacle to Africa’s emancipation and progress was the imaginary border/horizon implanted in our collective mindset by decades and centuries of colonialism.

My remix of Kwame Nkrumah’s famous saying would be . . . “The Independence of Ghana is meaningless until the total liberation of African minds is achieved".

I can visualize Kwame Nkrumah up there in heaven, nodding his head and smiling in approval.