Interstate Wars in Africa : Costs, Trade and Territoriality

Why have interstate wars broken out in Africa, what are their economic impacts, and what are viable solutions?

Bhaso Ndzendze examines competing explanations for these conflicts over borders and develops a new theory—Varieties of Inverted Legitimacy—that puts regime type difference at the fore of why states escalate over territories that sometimes have neither exceptional agricultural value nor any known mineral reserves.

Crucially, the book reinstates continental agency by placing emphasis on African states'' own rivalries as the primary variable behind these dyadic conflicts — finding external powers to have little to no influential role in the outbreaks despite Cold War and geopolitically competitive contexts.

Using the Ogaden War (1977-78), the Uganda-Tanzania War (1978-79), and Eritrea-Ethiopia War (1998-2000) as case studies, Ndzendze traverses precolonial and post-independence histories, trade data, and state symbolism to distill the causes, costs and viable solutions to these disputes which threaten economic integration on the continent under the African Continental Free Trade Area.