Considering Micro-regionalism in Africa in the Twenty-first Century

This collection focuses on the making and unmaking of cross-border micro-regions in Africa. Its main emphasis is that micro-regions are not givens, but are constructed and reconstructed through social practice, political economy and, in discourse, by a variety of states, corporations and non-state actors. The region-builders are the focus — that is, those actors that build and make micro-regions and their associated region-building strategies. Key research questions are: for whom, for what purpose and with what consequences are micro-regions being made and unmade? There is also special emphasis on how people on the ground and local communities create their own region-building strategies and how they respond to the region-building strategies of others. The case studies — by leading scholars of African studies and the result of extensive fieldwork — include a wide selection of micro-regions all over Africa, such as the Maputo Development Corridor, the Zambezi Valley region, the Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique Growth Triangle, Walvis Bay, the Sierra Leone-Liberia border zone, cross-border micro-regions on the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region, North Africa, and so forth. Fredrik Söderbaum is Associate Professor in the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, and Associate Research Fellow, United Nations University-Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), Bruges, Belgium. Ian Taylor is Professor in the School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom and the Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.