Call for Papers: Symposium on the Dynamics and Impacts of Borders in Southern Africa’s TFCAs

The Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations, led by Professor Maano Ramutsindela (a joint chair between the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town), in partnership with the University of Botswana), invites submissions for a symposium on the dynamics and impacts of borders in Southern Africa’s Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs), to be held 13-14 January 2025, at the University of Botswana in Gaborone.

Political leaders and senior bureaucrats in Southern Africa tout the economic significance of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) or peace parks as important for tourism, for national and regional economic growth, job creation, conservation, and the sustainable use of natural resources. Since the 1990s, Southern Africa has accordingly witnessed an increase in TFCAs. The initiatives suit the goals of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) of regional integration and cooperation in managing shared natural resources as a strategy to sustainably utilize them. Research on TFCAs in the region has considered their history, coloniality, politics, economic and governance models as well as land use, and the symbiotic dynamics of organisms in those spaces. Though humans inhabit and rove these areas, there is a near absence of research that analyses the movements of people, goods, and services in and across the state borders that make up TFCAs. The movement of animals and tourists tend to command the most attention from both policy makers and researchers. But people work, do commerce, and eke livings in and around TFCAs. This symposium will address this apparent void in research and the blind spots in regional and national policies on TFCAs through deep and detailed discussions of human mobilities and state borders in these areas.

The papers in the symposium will consider TFCAs as areas that sustain the livelihoods of people who in and around them; as areas where goods and human services such as labour cross state borders and yet, state authorities seem oblivious to these realities. The apparent oblivion is contrary to the cross-border movement of animals and tourists, for which the policies of the states that participate in TFCA initiatives make provisions. Notwithstanding, all the mobilities referred to above bring people into contact with the border and have implications for the understanding of borders. The papers in the symposium will address these issues, with a view to generating new insights and making theoretical contributions to the study of borders and TFCAs. To this end, we welcome papers that consider border dynamics in TFCAs with a focus on or in relation to: