Respatializing Federalism in the Horn’s Borderlands: From Contraband Control to Transnational Governmentality

ABSTRACT

Analysts documenting the proliferation of border controls amidst the global War on Terror have highlighted recent extensions of state sovereignty into new geographies. Such shifts are largely driven by Western states’ security concerns as they partner with governments in Africa and other migrant-sending spaces to stem migration. In eastern Ethiopia, however, new dynamics of border securitization have facilitated African politicians’ efforts to extend governance in the opposite direction. This article traces how authorities in Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State (SRS) between 2010 and 2018 instrumentalized the decentralization of border control in attempts to both address the persistence of “contraband” border trade and tax evasion, and solve a longstanding security problem: opposition activities among diaspora Somalis. Theoretically connecting a “borderlands as resources” framework to conceptions of transnational governmentality, this study analyzes how the governance of trade at national and subnational borders may enable efforts to regulate diaspora groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Federalism
• border trade
• Somali diaspora
• transnational governmentality
• Ethiopia

Introduction

Border regulation strategies along the Ethiopia-Somaliland border since Ethiopia’s ethnic-based federal system was introduced in 1991 have reshaped opportunities for Somali inhabitants, famous in Ethiopia for their (stereotyped) involvement in “contraband” trade and resistance to Ethiopian governance (Girma and Gezahagn 2016; Kefale 2019; Matshanda 2014; Tazebew and Kefale 2021). This article argues that the impacts of decentralized border control since 2010 have stretched much farther than the “local” or “regional” scene. New practices of border regulation have drawn diaspora Somalis from North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere into new patterns of involvement in eastern Ethiopia.

This observed dynamic reframes two recent strands of border theorization as applied to African borderlands. First, in response to narratives about proliferating borders and border externalization/internalization (Johnson et al. 2011; Longo 2018), the strategic use of local borders to attract diaspora investment and involvement in a marginalized African region pushes analysis beyond narratives of spatial fragmentation. Although fragmentation is very real, and especially felt by Ethiopian nationals, proliferating borders that drive regional-scale fragmentation may also facilitate transnational integration processes. In eastern Ethiopia, as I will show, economic opportunities dependent on proliferating borders have attracted diaspora investment from abroad. Second, Ethiopian elites’ strategic use of borders serves to nuance discussions about the “overdetermination” of African borders by Euro-American security imperatives (cf. Balibar 2002, 80). African officials and other local actors may expand their power and agency not only locally, but also transnationally, by constructing new modes of border regulation and strategically instrumentalizing foreign security projects. As it has prompted new investment strategies among the Somali diaspora, the decentralization of border control from federal to regional authorities in SRS between 2010 and 2018 served as a linchpin for Ethiopian regional elites’ efforts to extend their control over diaspora Somalis. While European governments (among other international actors) have sought to advance new modes of border regulation to stem migration from Africa, SRS authorities leveraged border enforcement in attempts to extend their political influence into the heart of Europe, North America, and Australia. In sum, new border controls, including a proliferation of checkpoints and rigid intra-regional demarcations in Ethiopia, both gave diaspora Somalis new modes of involvement and power in SRS, and gave SRS officials new degrees of influence over a globalized Somali diaspora.

My approach to this precarious conjuncture of interests draws recent literature on border proliferation and overdetermination into discussion with critical approaches to state spatialization from anthropology and geography. In tension with concepts of border proliferation and overdetermination that suggest border control enforced by state actors, researchers on state borderlands in Africa and elsewhere show how state-led territorialization may be deeply entangled with processes of local resource appropriation and “indigenous commodification.” In eastern Ethiopia, this process has involved state elites, merchant capitalists, and “frontiersmen” who mediate between indigenous institutions and foreign state and capital (Korf, Hagmann, and Emmenegger 2015). Recent anthropological approaches to state territorialization have similarly insisted on the agency of “everyday,” local, and indigenous actors involved in upholding and contesting official projects of territorializing governance (Fabricant 2015; Tate 2015).

Recent studies in the Horn and elsewhere in Africa that have addressed relationships between diasporas and state territoriality have discussed diaspora involvement in markets and land commodification (Korf, Hagmann, and Emmenegger 2015), as well as political projects (Brinkerhoff 2017; Hoehne 2016). I emphasize a different aspect of such relationships, showing how diaspora involvement may be configured by “local” state efforts to control mobility and trade at international and intranational borders. Where previous analysts of diaspora involvement in African state projects have highlighted alliances between states and diaspora capital, I emphasize how such uneasy alliances may be undergirded by African governments’ strategic instrumentalization of resource privatization, kinship connections, and economic opportunities to exercise a degree of control—akin to what Ong (1999) terms “graduated sovereignty”—over diaspora populations.

The first section below problematizes theory on border proliferation with reference to a regional historical overview of borderlands transformations. The second section discusses the notion of border overdetermination in connection to several overlapping types of “foreign” intervention in SRS, from governance exercised by non-Somali Ethiopians from the northern highlands (Amhara and Tigrayans, locally termed Habesha) to US War on Terror security measures. The third section explains how border control measures have served as one piece of a broader reconfiguration of governance that has worked to respatialize eastern Ethiopian federalism by connecting border control to efforts at “governmentalizing” diaspora Somalis through a combination of opportunity and threat. Here I draw on one year of ethnographic research in the Ethiopia-Somaliland-Djibouti border area in 2017–2018, which focused on Jigjiga, the SRS capital city and main border trade hub. I conducted in-depth interviews with 55 businesspeople (including 27 diaspora returnees) and 8 regional officials, and also conducted frequent participant-observation on buses and private cars crossing intranational and international boundaries. The fourth section locates transformations at borders to a broader reconfiguration of diaspora interests in SRS that affected some diaspora Somalis’ behavior and lives far beyond Ethiopia. I conclude by reflecting on avenues for further research and conceptualization of relationships between managing territorial borders and governing extraterritorial populations.

Border Proliferation? An Abbreviated Regional History

Theorists focusing on borders in the global North have demonstrated that since the 1990s border controls have proliferated and expanded geographically, moving selectively beyond borderlines into the interior or exterior of national territories (Balibar 2002; Johnson et al. 2011; Longo 2018). The notion of border “internalization” is arguably a Eurocentric conception, relevant primarily in contrast to the homogenization of national space that took place (albeit unevenly) across Europe by the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, many African states have witnessed persistent intra-state socio-spatial differentiation around ethnicity and economic organization.

In terms of ethnic boundaries, this intra-territorial differentiation in part reflects a tendency Kopytoff (1987) described in terms of African “internal” or “interstitial” frontiers: low population densities historically undercut the ability of African polities to effectively territorialize rule, creating marginal areas where new ethnic groups formed. Ethnic differentiations were famously politicized and calcified in many areas under colonial and subsequent postcolonial administration (Mamdani 1996). Although Ethiopia avoided long-term European colonization, these observations are relevant to outlying regions of Ethiopia. Highland Ethiopians historically divided their geography into three zones: the highlands, the intermediate zone, and the more sparsely populated lowland valleys and plains. These climatic regions also assume broader meaning related to differing modes of life and character (Zewde 2001). Such regional differentiations have persisted: Today’s Ethiopian federal state developed from a multi-ethnic empire whose geographical frontiers fluctuated, incorporating and differentiating a variety of ethno-linguistic groups and resource frontiers subject to different forms of governance (Donham and James 1986; Oba 2013).

In terms of trade and economic controls, the encompassment of diverse ethno-regional power structures in the Ethiopian Empire is reflected in a history of internal customs posts (Pankhurst 1968), similar to those in parts of Europe before national homogenization (Braudel 1988). In eastern Ethiopia, such checkpoints are intertwined with a broader governance approach that conceptualizes Somali-inhabited space as an unstable frontier zone. Officials in the Federal Government of Ethiopia (FGoE) and highland elites have persistently defined the predominantly pastoralist and sparsely populated region as largely uninhabited and open to new agricultural schemes and land appropriation (Korf, Hagmann, and Doevenspeck 2013). While frontiers and borders are not synonymous, the definition of the region as an emerging frontier of state-building and development in this case has been attended by the maintenance of numerous security checkpoints within eastern Ethiopia and between what is today SRS and Ethiopia’s central highlands.

Over the past 120 years, the idea of SRS as an ungoverned region amenable to state-building has been reinforced by two persistent dynamics: insurgency and contraband trade. Resistance to Ethiopian rule has been a theme of Ethiopian Somali life since the first incursions of Emperor Menelik II’s forces into the region in the late 1880s (Eshete 1994). This resistance was partly a response of subjugated Somalis to a military occupation led by ethnically distinct Habeshas. However, it was also a complex international issue. Ethiopian forces’ expansion into the Somali-inhabited lowlands sought to counter French, British, and Italian occupation of the Horn of Africa’s coastline (Thompson 2020b). These European-controlled territories became—from north to south—French Somaliland (now Djibouti), British Somaliland, and Italian Somaliland. (British Somaliland later joined Italian Somaliland to form the Republic of Somalia in 1960, but declared independence as the Somaliland Republic after Somalia’s central government collapsed in 1991.) By 1910, European powers agreed in principle on colonial borders, recognizing Ethiopia’s sovereignty over a large Somali population. In practice, however, Ethiopia as a whole was a sphere of “semicolonial” European power as Britain, Italy, and France vied for influence with Ethiopia’s rulers and worked to advance their control over trade (Feyissa 2016).

This hybrid sovereignty was especially evident in the eastern borderlands. From the outset, the late-nineteenth-century colonization of the northern Horn was shaped by Somali kinship links that structure society into clans. The Somali clan structure places individuals within networks of mutual support and responsibility, a fact leveraged by imperial authorities as well as some present-day officials (as will be seen below) to locate potential renegades and at times institute collective punishment for misdeeds (Hagmann 2014; Thompson 2020a). British authorities claimed several clans as British Somaliland’s subjects and other clans as Ethiopian subjects, but quickly recognized that clan-based definitions of subjecthood did not neatly align with territorial boundaries. Reflecting tensions between social and territorial boundaries of governance, an 1897 Ethiopia-Somaliland boundary agreement permitted Somalis to cross the international border to graze livestock. As a result of this and a 1908 treaty granting Europeans “extraterritorial jurisdiction” in Ethiopia, the Ethiopia-Somaliland border region was subject to effectively hybrid political control from 1897 until Italy occupied Ethiopia in 1935.

Two decades of European domination followed this period of hybrid governance. First, Italy occupied all of Ethiopia (1935–1941). Then Britain retained control over Somali-inhabited eastern Ethiopia under military administration (1941–1955). European officials occupying the region encouraged Somali resistance to Ethiopian rule (Thompson 2020a). British officials and Somali elites advocated for the creation of a “Greater Somalia” that would sever Somali-inhabited lands from Ethiopia and conjoin them with the former British and Italian Somalilands. It was little surprise, then, that many Somalis violently resisted the gradual return of what is now SRS to Ethiopian sovereignty between 1948 and 1954 (Barnes 2007). After 1955, Ethiopian officials faced the challenge of integrating the area into an Ethiopian imperial economy amidst a heightened politicization of ethnicity.

A core strategy of historic Ethiopian state-building was taxation, but efforts to impose taxes repeatedly backfired along the eastern border. When Ethiopian officials sought to impose taxes on Somalis’ livestock or on cross-border commerce, the most benign response was collective evasion. Somalis found room to utilize regional borders as resources, from escaping across the border from Ethiopia into Somaliland to escape taxation (Barnes 2010) to trading livestock and consumer goods across the porous border. At times, though—for example, in 1963—taxation triggered rebellion among Somalis who were already chafing at the Ethiopian Empire’s heavy-handed rule (Hagmann 2014). Amidst conflict and political marginalization, untaxed or informal cross-border trade—both officially and popularly termed “contraband”—was a source of livelihood for Jigjiga’s inhabitants as well as a statement about political identity and opposition to Ethiopian settler-colonial rule (Thompson 2020b).

After the Ethiopian Empire was overthrown and a socialist Derg regime set up in 1974–1975, rebellion escalated. The neighboring Republic of Somalia supplied weapons to rebels and eventually invaded, attempting to make “Greater Somalia” a reality through the Ethio-Somali or “Ogaden” War of 1977–1978. This unsuccessful bid to redraw geopolitical boundaries was a defining moment in regional politics and the creation of a global Somali diaspora. Nearly a million Ethiopian Somalis crowded Somalia’s refugee camps. Many in turn sought resettlement or asylum abroad. Members of the growing diaspora coalesced into several opposition movements. Most notable among Somali opposition groups were the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) that fought in eastern Ethiopia during the 1970s-1980s and its offshoot, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) that coalesced in diaspora during the 1980s.

The WSLF and ONLF were less materially relevant to the Derg government’s collapse than were rebel groups from other Ethiopian regions. However, with the Derg government ousted in 1991, the ONLF aligned itself with a coalition of former rebel movements that came together to re-draw Ethiopia’s internal boundaries in ways that reproduced ethnic differentiations (and gave internal checkpoints and customs posts new meanings, rather than eliminating them). The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the umbrella organization comprising several former ethnic-based opposition movements, established today’s multinational federal system, formalized in 1995. Commonly called “ethnic federalism,” the system divides the country into six ethnically-defined regional states (of which SRS is one), three multi-ethnic states, and two federal cities. Decentralization created manifold overlapping modes of border control enacted by federal, regional, and local officials. Internal checkpoints demarcating eastern Ethiopia from the state’s “center” also reflect and perhaps reinforce official rhetorical definitions of SRS as a largely lawless region inhabited by smugglers and secessionists, and an “emerging region” with development potential. These intertwined dynamics of defining and policing space have invited new forms of broader-scale transnational integration to the region. One set of processes involved foreign governments and the FGoE intervening in regional borderlands security. This dynamic is explored in the next section, before the subsequent section traces the other set of processes by identifying how border control has established new parameters for relations between SRS and diaspora Somalis.

Spatializing Federalism in SRS, 1991–2010

Persistent insurgency fomented Ethiopia’s shift towards federalism, but its continuation since 1991 has also limited political transformation in “Region 5” or SRS. The EPRDF coalition excluded the ONLF from participation in core federal decision-making even as the ONLF took control of SRS. Ruling parties of other regions were also excluded from the federal governing coalition (see Lata 1999), but some SRS officials explained their specific exclusion in terms of Somalis’ historic association with foreign aggression. “If we had not fought in the 1977 war on the side of Somalia,” argued one regional official who observed 1990s political shifts, “we would have been part of the EPRDF today” (author field notes, January 24, 2018). SRS’s marginalization was also undergirded by its political definition as an “emerging region,” an underdeveloped periphery relative to the Ethiopian center. By these means, even as federalism ostensibly created the framework for ethno-regional autonomy many Somalis desired, regional leaders were excluded from organizing and implementing federalism.

A pivotal aspect of FGoE intervention in the region since the 1990s has been border regulation. Federal security agents from the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) police international borders and some internal borders, while the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA) also maintains a presence at both international borders and internal checkpoints. However, this was not simply an issue of Ethiopian national sovereignty versus regional autonomy. Ethiopia is a strategic location for international security interventions, including secret initiatives as well as more public programs with names like “Better Migration Management” (BMM 2020), with some parallels to European technological support for border enforcement across the Sahel belt in West Africa (Frowd 2018). SRS can be seen as a theater of what Balibar (2002, 80) terms the “overdetermination” of African borders by European and US pressures surrounding security and migration. European border control efforts have externalized Europe’s borders, pushing their effective location onto the African continent where third countries manage (or jointly manage) migration to prevent African emigration (Akkerman 2018; Alexander-Nathani 2020; Menjívar 2014).

While Ethiopia is farther from Europe’s borders, it is a consistent source of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Migration concerns intertwine with terrorism concerns at checkpoints across SRS. Checkpoints on the eastbound route from Jigjiga towards Somaliland stop public buses and minibus taxis while soldiers search for unaccompanied youth suspected of trying to emigrate via Somaliland. The same checkpoints stop westbound buses returning from Somaliland, and soldiers ostensibly search for “terrorists” and weapons. These local border dynamics have been shaped by foreign security involvement in SRS surrounding Africa-Europe migration, but they are also directly linked to US concerns about “radical Islam” in the Horn during the 1990s and early 2000s, and Ethiopia’s role as a US ally in the War on Terror.

Insurgency and Foreign Involvement

In the initial years of federalism, the ONLF briefly held power in SRS. Its ouster from regional politics in 1994 reflected a constant theme of federalism: blatant FGoE intervention in appointing and removing regional officials. Some ONLF leaders returned to violent insurrection by 1997. ONLF rebellion paralleled, and also overlapped in some areas, with insurgencies by other groups operating across national borders, including al-Qaeda in Somalia (de Waal 2015), al-Itihad al-Islamiyya and other militias whose cross-border operations were in part enabled by the Somalian government’s 1991 collapse. Secessionist insurgency built on widespread popular discontent among Somalis in Ethiopia (Hagmann 2014; Samatar 2004); however, as with historic Somali resistance to Ethiopian rule, it was not simply an ethnic-based rebellion, but a transnational problem. Perhaps the clearest foreign involvement was Eritrea’s support for the ONLF rebellion when Eritrea and Ethiopia plunged into war in 1998 (Abdullahi 2007). The same year, al-Qaeda operatives bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, bringing attention to Islamist networks in Somalia. By the time two planes struck New York’s World Trade Center in September 2001, the stage was set for an articulation of transnational interests in insurgency and counterinsurgency in the Ethiopia-Somalia borderlands.

Within months of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the US National Security Agency (NSA) established Lion’s Pride, a signal intelligence operations center in Addis Ababa. The expansion of Lion’s Pride to Dire Dawa in 2006 preceded Ethiopian offensives in Somalia, which both stirred anti-Ethiopian sentiments among ethnic Somalis and established a rationale for increasingly heavy-handed securitization in SRS. While Lion’s Pride in Dire Dawa’s main objective was reportedly to extend listening capacity to reach Mogadishu, a second purpose was “close-in” signals collection focused on “terrorists in eastern Ethiopia” (Expanding Joint US-Ethiopian SIGINT Collection 2006). At a May 2006 planning conference, American and Ethiopian officials agreed to expand cooperation to target “eastern Ethiopia’s Ogaden region and the nearby Somali borderlands,” and collect intelligence not only on suspected terrorists, but also on “illicit smugglers” (Turse, n.d.). Foreign technological support began to enable new attempts to spatialize political-economic control in the border region.

US security support for Ethiopia affected unfolding transformations in the region’s governance structure. The late 1990s and early 2000s were characterized by practical governance arrangements in which Somalis held only nominal power over their own ethnic region. The Ethiopian military was effectively running SRS, with martial governance legitimized by ongoing cross-border infiltration and insurgency. As counterinsurgency campaigns intensified in the mid-2000s, however, it became apparent that the presence of non-Somali federal forces in the region was fueling insurgency as much as countering it. SRS officials appointed by the FGoE found themselves caught between foreign-backed violent insurgents with a degree of local sympathy and an unpopular federal government pursuing violent counterinsurgency.

Despite Ethiopia's foreign-backed technological capacity, unproductive counterinsurgency strategies and ineffective leadership undermined FGoE and ENDF control in areas beyond the regional capital, Jigjiga. ʿAbdinur,¹ a diaspora investor from the UK, found during a 2006 visit to Dhegaḥbur, a town south of Jigjiga, that ONLF-affiliated militias controlled the roads. The town of Fiq, also within a half-day’s drive of Jigjiga, was reported as hotbed of militia activity through 2009. Jigjiga and Gode, another major military post, appeared as islands in a sea of “ungoverned” territory. The spatial effects of nearly two decades of Ethiopian federalism up to this point appear to have been less effective in “state-building” and more productive of a fragmented landscape of insecurity, loosely united by local resistance to Ethiopian federal forces.

Changes were already on the horizon amidst the counterinsurgency campaigns that began in 2007. Over the next two years, observers noted a reconfiguration of leadership around the young regional security head, ʿAbdi Moḥamoud ʿUmar—known locally as ʿAbdi Iley. ʿAbdi emerged as “the right guy” for federal and military officials looking for an effective Somali leader who would pursue their agenda in the region. In 2010, he was appointed SRS president. The governance strategy that began to take shape in 2009–2010 sought to bring together federal (and foreign) interests in securitizing the region and Somali Regional interests in a degree of autonomy and self-governance. A linchpin of this strategy would be increasing the effectiveness of border trade regulation and strategically leveraging the patchwork geography of checkpoints and sub-regional zones to create new market opportunities for business elites.

“Contraband” and State Space

If geopolitical borders in SRS were in one sense “overdetermined” by extra-regional pressures seeking to effectively spatialize Ethiopian security, the boundaries themselves remained fluid and contested on the ground. As viewed by many Somalis, even government-run checkpoints were sites not only of control, but of collaboration with state agents, of flexible rules and uneven enforcement. The long land border and history of cross-border pastoralist mobility complicated matters. While informal cross-border livestock exports continue to be the regional economy’s foundation, regulation has until recently tended to focus on managing imports, especially those of consumer goods along main roads (Eid 2014). Yet even along established routes, cross-border trade and mobility were poorly enforced during the 1980s and 1990s. Women who took Ethiopian fresh produce to Somaliland and returned with Asian-manufactured consumer goods during the 1980s report that as long as they spoke Amharic, any border patrols they happened to encounter would let them pass without hassle. Amidst persistent insecurity, so-called contraband trade has provided a relatively stable source of livelihood. Government efforts to enforce the borders tended to simply shift trade routes towards pathways of least resistance. Since the introduction of federalism, the main contraband corridor has shifted from the Djibouti-Dire Dawa route, to the Hargeisa-Hartisheik route in the later 1990s, to the Hargeisa-Tog Wajale-Jigjiga corridor after 2002 (Kefale 2019; Stepputat and Hagmann 2019).

Contraband means several different things depending on who is defining it—and where. Federal Customs Proclamation No. 622/2009 advocates a “strong system of law enforcement … to prevent the increasing incidence, from time to time, of contraband and other commercial fraud crimes which are resulting [in a] negative impact to legitimate trade, public security, government revenue and other social and economic development” (FDRE 2009). The ERCA defines contraband as essentially any goods not subjected to customs inspection and taxation. The concept of “legitimate trade,” however, signals a disconnect between cross-border trade’s legal status and the fact that untaxed “contraband” is culturally legitimate in the borderlands. “The contraband traders raised us up,” Bashe, a long-time contraband trader reflects. “The way people reached development was … Jigjiga town was made up of traders, contraband. The people living in this area all used to work contraband” (author’s interview, July 1, 2018). Amidst the fragmentation of federal space, Somalis’ work upheld a pre-federal geography of cross-border trade links and social relations.

This is not simply a legal-versus-illegal issue, either: As Kefale (2019, 17) points out, “while the Ethiopian state officially criminalizes what it calls ‘contraband’ trade, it has nonetheless been pragmatic in accommodating cross-border imports.” Several federal and regional border trade directives have defined areas, populations, and goods permitted for participation in cross-border trade. A 1995 Ministry of Trade and Industry directive, amended in 2009, provides for a small-scale cross-border trade license to be provided to any Ethiopian living in the border area, defined as within 10 kilometers of listed border towns, at a cost of 25 birr (about US $1.75 in 2009) (Ministry of Trade and Industry 2009; Tazebew and Kefale 2021). A 2015 bilateral protocol with Djibouti set up a joint border trade committee to issue licenses to border area residents carrying out small-scale trade in certain goods (FDRE 2015). However, most self-styled “contraband” traders live in towns and cities like Jigjiga which are outside the sparsely inhabited immediate border area. In sum, attempts to regulate contraband have reinforced the patchwork geography of checkpoints, but in practice the enforcement of borderlands trade and mobility has appeared more flexible than a narrative of border “overdetermination” and high-tech security interventions would seem to suggest. Recently, other techniques of rule have come to the fore, including careful management of economic opportunities through borders and strategic leveraging of transnational kinship relations to regulate the behavior of mobile border-crossers and individuals beyond Ethiopia’s reach.

Respatializing Federalism: From Checkpoints to Transnationalism

From the perspectives of border-crossers, contraband checkpoints became much tougher between 2010 and 2018 than they were before or have been since ʿAbdi Iley was ousted from the regional presidency and arrested (in August 2018). This is especially true of checkpoints monitored by the regional Liyu Police militia under the direct command of ʿAbdi Iley. On one level, strict border controls imposed by ʿAbdi’s administration reflect a continuity in governing SRS as a threatening frontier. Yet during this period Ethiopia’s highly centralized authority manifest itself in new ways as Somalis who aligned themselves with EPRDF prerogatives became the face of regional governance. Ethiopia’s rapid economic growth in the 2000s-2010s fueled the disbursement of development funds to SRS, which provided money for government-controlled development projects as well as heightened border security. Collaboration between the Somalized post-2010 administration and the predominantly Tigrayan and Amhara agents of the ENDF and ERCA appears to have rendered border control more effective. This is in part because of Somali regional officials’ shared language, understanding of Somali culture and lineage systems, and commitment to regional security interests (see also Tazebew and Kefale 2021).

On another level, however, the Somalization of SRS administration, combined with strict border controls, opened up the region as a different sort of “frontier”: a frontier for investment, including investments by former secessionist sympathizers in diaspora. Simultaneous with a tightening of border regulation and checkpoint monitoring, the region witnessed a dramatic wave of diaspora return migration and investment, as well as the visible rise of businesspeople politically linked to the SRS administration. Some diaspora investors were profiting directly from border control—but more generally, investors were forced to engage with governance strategies based on spatial controls over trade and mobility.

The new strictness of border control was part of what several informants described as a “new federalism” initiated by ʿAbdi Iley’s administration. The SRS government’s Somalization was at the core of this new federalism. Recognizing that federal military presence was provoking rebellion, ʿAbdi worked with federal authorities to establish the Liyu (“Special”) Police, an ethnically Somali regional security force that replaced the national military in security operations—and were similarly violent to federal forces previously engaged in counterinsurgency. In Jigjiga, even ʿAbdi’s detractors sometimes agree that violence may have been necessary. In the words of one former regional politician and harsh regime critic: “What was needed in this region—but also what was needed for Ethiopia—was security … [ʿAbdi] was a dictator; he was a brutal guy. He killed a lot of people. But that was what was needed at the time” (author’s interview, December 31, 2017).

The region’s Somalization enabled two other aspects of this “new federalism” that were the most widely discussed and most critical for understanding daily life and economic change in the borderlands during my fieldwork in 2017–2018: new modes of border control, and new involvement of diaspora Somalis in regional affairs.

“New Federalism” at the Borders

New spatial strategies of borderlands governance were employed that continued to differentiate eastern Ethiopia from the “rest of Ethiopia”—and partitioned the region more tangibly into political-economic subunits. The Somalization of regional security enabled more consistent enforcement at the Somaliland-Ethiopia border. In 2017–2018, the borderline itself at Tog Wajale was easy for Somalis and other Ethiopians to cross, and the ERCA checkpoint in Tog Wajale generally did not present a major obstacle for travelers. However, the proliferation of security and contraband checkpoints within Ethiopia made passing difficult and often time-consuming. Checkpoints, long part of Ethiopia’s transportation landscape, attained new meanings. Formerly pieces of centrally-controlled (non-Somali-led) state-building, some were now staffed and managed by Somalis. To direct traffic through these checkpoints, the regional government established roving anti-contraband patrols and financially rewarded anyone who reported smugglers. Bashe, whom I quoted earlier praising contraband for bringing about development, tells stories of how Somali security personnel used to help him dig his truck full of smuggled TVs, cell phones, and boxes of pasta out of mud when it got stuck. They sympathized with a co-ethnic working against the restrictions of Ethiopian law. When border security became Somalized, Bashe was caught and spent several years in jail for smuggling.

The checkpoint most complained about in Jigjiga is Magalo Qaran—“Town of the Nation”—between Jigjiga and Tog Wajale. There Liyu Police in desert camouflage subject travelers to violating pat-downs and bag searches. It was here, most visibly, that the flexible deployment of the category “contraband” came to shape the regional landscape of economic opportunity and politics under ʿAbdi Iley’s regime. Men and women riding minibuses from Tog Wajale back to Jigjiga entered separate lines and were patted down respectively by male and female Liyu Police officials. These were intense, violating body-checks, and travelers often report physical beatings and harassment, as confirmed by other recent research (Abdi and Hagmann 2020). Small bags of “contraband” goods were permitted, but travelers were always uncertain what would be allowed and what would be confiscated. Regulations listed some items permitted to be imported tax free, including basic foodstuffs and cultural clothing—however, in my numerous passages through Magalo Qaran and discussions with hundreds of so-called “contraband” traders, regulations were seldom referenced by officials and rarely enforced. Instead, the blanket practice was to permit each traveler to carry a small amount of goods that could be deemed personal effects, and to confiscate anything larger than about what fits in one plastic shopping bag. The unpredictability of checkpoint enforcement itself appears as a technique of governance: people relied on personalized relations with state agents, rather than on the law, in order to successfully cross the borderlands.

Yet Magalo Qaran is but one piece in a fabric of broader geographic fragmentation. In Somali Region, it was not just the Somaliland border that gained new importance. Under a system referred to as “renaissance” (dib-u-curasho), SRS administrators strictly controlled political appointment in sub-regional zones, ostensibly to prevent favoritism and “tribalism” by placing officials in areas where they did not belong to the local kinship structure. This administrative organization was combined with the enforcement of zonal and even lower-level district (wereda) market controls. Rather than general trade licenses to import goods to the region, SRS officials granted individuals exclusive rights to import certain goods to specific zones or districts. For instance, one person would be permitted to bring snack products (or soft drinks, or tax-free cooking oil) to one zone, and another to bring the same products to the neighboring zone. This is combined with the effective exclusion of import competition via exorbitant tax rates. Customs duties range as high as 35% on the total value plus freight and insurance costs; excise taxes, value-added taxes, and surtaxes are calculated cumulatively and can quickly add up to more than the price of imported goods.²

The effect of these border controls at the Somaliland border as well as internal checkpoints was a patchwork of mini-monopolies that are universally understood in Jigjiga as carefully managed financial incentives granted to government supporters. Opportunities were expanded by a range of government contracts subject to a formal bid system, but in practice reserved for regime clients. Through new federal subsidies, ʿAbdi “built businesspeople,” says Jamal, a 50-year-old diaspora returnee from Canada (author interview, June 12, 2018). Warsame, a 28-year-old investor from Australia, concurs: “in America, Australia, or the UK, this would be like a mafia sort of business” (author interview, December 8, 2017). As the large-scale contraband trade ground towards a halt for those not affiliated with the administration, hand-picked local businesspeople and diaspora returnees found new opportunities to profit.

“New Federalism” and the Diaspora

“Africa is good for business,” says Ḥassan, a returnee from northern Europe in his 30s who imports cars and consumer goods and exports vegetables and coffee from Ethiopia to Somaliland. “I’ve made a ton of money … Everything you bring, you can sell” (author’s interview, April 6, 2018). Ḥassan had recently gone to China and India to purchase shoes for import. During two weeks in Mumbai, he says he visited about 70 shoe factories with Somali brokers who connected him to Indian manufacturers. Finally, he filled two 40-foot containers and imported them to Berbera and then on to Tog Wajale. This is the “other side” of the difficulties in trade and mobility faced by small-scale contraband traders: people with connections, licenses, and the right passports were able to move relatively easily, and to profit from the restricted markets. This also involves easier access to the other side of borders globally. Ḥassan has a northern European passport. Unlike Ethiopian nationals, he can easily travel abroad to seek opportunities and obtain trade goods. Looking beyond the immediate checkpoint-riddled landscape, the discourse of SRS as an emerging market frontier, new modes of border control, and the strategic proliferation of internal borders served as leverage points through which SRS officials sought to extend opportunities to diaspora Somalis and tempt them into aligning their interests with the administration’s.

Simultaneous with new border controls introduced after 2010, a major shift in relations between SRS and its diasporic populations began to take shape. ʿAbdi led regional delegations to invite Ethiopian Somalis back “home” to visit and invest. A returnee from Columbus, Ohio, reported that ʿAbdi’s visit “gave us a lot of confidence” (author’s interview, Nov. 17, 2017). He and other diaspora investors I interviewed mentioned the region’s “undeveloped” status as a rationale for shifting investments from overseas into SRS. Other diaspora investors reported, however, that SRS officials used a threat of force to push diaspora Somalis to attend outreach meetings, but then shifted in the meetings to emphasizing the undeveloped opportunities for profit on the market frontier. For example, Musa, a current investor in Jigjiga, reported that he was forced to come to an outreach meeting in the Persian Gulf country where he lived: “You know Somalis, they know each other … . They call you. By force you have to come to that meeting; otherwise your people [i.e. relatives in Ethiopia] will get arrested.” Yet once Musa arrived at the meeting, SRS officials switched to a marketing strategy: “They started advertising. They started showing a video, showing us videos from rivers, how opportunities are there” (author’s interview, June 25, 2018). Only thirteen years after fleeing the country and seeking asylum abroad, Musa began to pour his savings into a region that attracted him by threatening his relatives.

These shifts toward investment are one piece of a larger transformation in diaspora Somalis’ orientations towards Ethiopia. As Warsame, from Australia, reported: “Not only my parents, but the Somalis over there—one year before, or two years before ʿAbdi came through … they were protesting Ethiopian government everywhere in those countries” (author’s interview, December 8, 2017). After 2010, there was an astonishing about-face in perspective and a wave of return migration. While a few emigrants had visited SRS from abroad prior to 2010, return migration—from short-term visits and tourism to long-term investment—surged in response to SRS efforts to re-engage diaspora Somalis. By 2015, the SRS Diaspora Bureau had an electronic registry of 595 returnees from 23 countries. This hardly appears to encompass all cases of diaspora return, as several different registries exist and some short-term returnees avoid registration. In addition, due to political tensions, data on diaspora returnees were unavailable from regional government agencies in 2017–2018.

By the numbers, most diaspora investment was not directly in the import-export sector, which is not surprising since licenses are difficult to obtain and so closely managed by officials. Yet even urban property and industries profiting from Jigjiga’s rapid urban development were indirectly linked to border-dependent opportunities. Relationships between diaspora businesses and border management strategies can be loosely grouped into three categories: (1) import-export and zone-specific trade businesses directly dependent on official trade licenses; (2) contract and commission work through partnerships with import-exporters or licensed traders; and (3) businesses that were indirectly affected by borders due to the simple fact that almost all machinery, construction materials, and luxury goods must be imported to SRS from abroad.

Import-Export Licenses or “LCs”

Not only in Somali Region, but throughout Ethiopia, licenses to import, including specific licenses for tax-free essential goods like grains and cooking oils, were reportedly granted to supporters and relatives of government officials. As might be anticipated, this is a difficult class of businesspeople for an anthropologist to study. In contrast to small-scale contraband traders, diaspora investors and other wealthy import-export traders with government connections often work their trade remotely from houses or offices, keeping close connections to high-level officials while relying on truck drivers and a network of clients to carry on the day-to-day trade. Interviewing such people, some of whom were busy and highly mobile millionaires with multiple transnational investments, was made even more difficult due to rising public criticism of the regional patronage system and anticipations that ʿAbdi’s regional administration would soon collapse amidst a crisis of governance in 2017–2018. Nevertheless, I met and spoke with eight businesspeople who had obtained trade licenses or engaged in contract work through close government connections, as well as three trade officials who were involved in the government side of trade licensing and management. I also took notes on many more informal meetings with individuals who had managed to obtain licenses.

Ḥassan, the Norwegian investor, managed to meet directly with President ʿAbdi. He had already built inroads with the administration by marrying the daughter of a high-level official, and his connections likely named him to ʿAbdi as a potential ally. Returnees in such positions are sometimes invited to accompany regional officials to see development projects or participate in opening ceremonies for bridges or dams in the region. According to this charismatic businessman, at one such ceremony in Dhegaḥbur, ʿAbdi asked him what he would like in order to best contribute to development. He replied that he wanted to import cars and export coffee. A license quickly came down the pipeline. Ḥassan was one of an elite class in Jigjiga popularly known as maalin-taajiriin or “millionaires-in-a-day,” the majority of whom were evidently beneficiaries of import-export licenses. Since 2015, Jigjiga’s skyline has been increasingly dominated by hotels and business centers owned by import-export licensees. Relatively few are diaspora Somalis; most are Ethiopian nationals, and some are linked by kinship relations to ʿAbdi Iley, such as Hassen Wali, a maternal relative who obtained a lucrative trade license and built a prominent business center and hotel at Jigjiga’s central roundabout. A block east of Hassen Wali Hotel is Zuhura’s Hamda 2 Hotel—and across the street, her husband ʿAgaweyne’s hotel (completed by 2019), both built with the profits of a virtual monopoly on the export of the Ethiopian-grown drug chat (also called khat or qat) to Somaliland. On the west side of town, two well-known local women were constructing prominent structures. Both were beneficiaries of Ethiopia’s internal borders: they held monopoly licenses to trade chat grown in the nearby highlands to certain districts in SRS. As Warsame observes, “within two months you have a couple of million birr” if you manage to obtain a license—“and you had zero yesterday” (author’s interview, December 8, 2017).

Such licenses are perceived to be given to loyal government supporters, and the very possibility of obtaining one through political allegiance appears sufficient to keep some local and diaspora businesspeople quiet about their uneasiness with the autocratic regional administration. Ḥassan complained to me confidentially about his fear of ʿAbdi and his frustration with the regional dictatorship, but in public he lavished praise on officials, and on social media he posted messages of support for the SRS administration. Another diaspora returnee from Sweden who worked with some import-export businesspeople reported that he had been officially tasked by SRS with promoting the administration among the diaspora; in return for his propagandistic public messaging, he was granted opportunities for supply contracts.

Contract and Commission Traders

Diaspora investors in the import-export sectors also pursued less direct and less “political” strategies. Some sought to maintain distance from regional political elites. After all, many said, it was just a matter of time before the regional administration was replaced (FGoE officials had removed all previous Somali Regional presidents, and imprisoned several). Exemplifying this strategy was another diaspora returnee from the UK, whose pseudonym is ʿAbdinur. A broker in Dire Dawa paired ʿAbdinur with politically-connected people in parts of Ethiopia outside of SRS—specifically, he worked mostly with those who have import licenses to bring goods into Oromia. Rather than rely directly on political connections, ʿAbdinur preferred to work on contract, arranging the purchase of materials abroad and their shipment into Ethiopia for a commission (often about $5,000 per load). The local import-export license-holder was responsible for distributing goods once they arrived.

Other diaspora investors who did not directly obtain import-export licenses nevertheless worked to obtain contracts that provided a limited permit to supply goods such as computers, cars, or fuel to the SRS administration. Government supply contracts, though evidently not as lucrative as more permanent licenses, were nevertheless a pathway to quick profits for some. Aden, a returnee from the US, reported having worked on some such contracts in the interest of making a quick profit, though in the end he either shied away or was excluded from this sector that requires close political connections. Nevertheless, since he had established other business interests in farming and real estate, he and his family members also kept quiet about their complaints regarding the regional administration.

Indirectly Border-Linked Businesses

The new dynamics of border enforcement not only benefitted politically-connected people who manage to obtain trade licenses or contracts; they also shaped the profitability of investments that appear to be less directly border-dependent. The prevalence of diaspora investment in urban service and real estate should not disguise the fact that many supplies for such investments are imported via Somaliland. Investors in these sectors can obtain letters from the SRS administration and ERCA that enable them to import certain business-related implements tax-free. Such goods as reported by informants ranged from trucks to computers to machinery and exercise equipment. Some investors found these letters easy to obtain, while others experienced extreme difficulty either in obtaining permission or in actually importing such goods. Many in the latter category described these difficulties as part of a political ploy to hamper their profits while channeling business to administration supporters. For instance, five diaspora brothers who owned a prominent hotel were falling out of favor with ʿAbdi’s administration by 2017, and complained that a container of exercise equipment intended for their hotel’s new gym had been held up in Tog Wajale while they awaited a letter granting permission to import the goods without paying the exorbitant tax.

Faisal, a diaspora returnee from Ohio, reported his struggle to import machinery and a pickup truck for his construction materials business tax-free. With the promise of tax-free imports, he had arranged for the truck and machines to be shipped to Djibouti. “I got the machines in, even though I got a lot of hassle at the customs,” he observed. ERCA officials asked him for a birth certificate and a diaspora card that recognizes his status as Ethiopian-Somali diaspora. Eventually, a Somali who now works in the federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote a letter that permitted Faisal’s machinery to be imported. The truck, however, was not allowed because its engine size exceeded some specific guidelines about which Faisal had never been informed. Faisal spent six months raising the funds to pay the tax in order to bring the truck in from Djibouti. After several years in Jigjiga, he was pragmatic about the experience: “everybody has got his own stories to tell” about importing business goods from abroad (author’s interview, November 17, 2017).

Whether directly, through granting licenses, or less directly through contracts or letters granting tax-free status for specific imports, nearly every diaspora investor I met in Jigjiga reported being dependent on regional or federal government connections to enable business-related material to cross borders. In their seminal volume on African borderlands, Feyissa and Hoehne (2010) seek to understand how borderlanders—people who live along and are divided by state borders—utilize immaterial resources such as trans-border social relations and socio-geographical position near more or less porous borders to extract social, economic, or political benefits. Their volume shows how boundary-related opportunities derive in part from the way borders establish connections by separating political and economic spaces: “In order to profit from borders people have to work to spin connections” (ibid., 10).

A core characteristic of diaspora investment in SRS was the necessity of working to create government connections, in many cases specifically to move things across the numerous borders that surrounded and subdivided the region. Diaspora Somalis observed a specific opportunity in SRS: Ethiopian nationals’ lack of mobility often gave diaspora a major edge in obtaining materials from abroad to import, reflecting how distinct regulatory regimes divided by borders generate opportunities for profit (Kefale 2019; Nugent 2002; Odegaard 2008). However, at the borders, diaspora investors became increasingly reliant on local officials who utilize borders to place these investors in a position of dependency. In turn, I consistently observed diaspora Somalis with interests in the region engaging in double-speak about regional politics. While privately expressing opposition to the government, the majority of those I interviewed expressed support for the administration in public and on social media. In practice, as with informal border-dependent arrangements elsewhere (cf. Anderson and O’Dowd 1999, 597), many business opportunities appear to be short-term and unstable; investors who fall out of favor with the administration reportedly find that opportunities dry up quickly.

Transnational Governmentality: Practice and Theory

To understand how border regulation strategies affected Somali diaspora involvement in SRS, and the lives of many Ethiopian Somalis abroad, it is important to recognize that local business opportunities were not the sole driver of diaspora return. Border regulation must be understood in broader context to appreciate its significance and effects. Diaspora returnees, including those involved in border-dependent trade, tended to name the conjuncture of several dynamics that shaped their decisions to return to SRS and invest there. While I noted above some shifts that the War on Terror brought to SRS, it was also a frequently referenced reason why diaspora Somalis, suspect as potential “terrorists” abroad, felt pushed from the global North towards the Horn of Africa. In addition to this, the 2008–2009 global financial collapse created heightened uncertainty about the future of economies in the Western world. ʿAbdinur, a former banker in the UK, spoke about the financial crisis as an impetus for him to diversify his assets by turning to business in Africa. Finally, many middle-aged and older diaspora Somalis living abroad faced the difficulty of saving for an unattainable retirement in the “developed world” on meager earnings: SRS was an attractive retirement destination for diaspora Somalis born there.

There were numerous factors that contributed to return migration, but the strategic use of border licenses and the creation of protected markets in SRS appears to have drawn investors who might otherwise have leaned towards investing in Somaliland, Somalia, or Kenya—where Somali diaspora investment has also soared over recent decades. In the context of uncertainties faced by many Somalis in diaspora, some of whom are current or former refugees or have impermanent migration statuses, some diaspora Somalis reported desiring to keep their options for future migration open, including to Ethiopia.

Through social media promotion of SRS narratives and through kinship links that extended from the region into diaspora spaces, diaspora Somalis who did invest in Ethiopia often promoted a more benign view of SRS than the perspectives that had historically driven support for secessionism. On the extreme end of the spectrum were diaspora Somalis who sang pro-SRS propagandistic songs broadcast via YouTube and other media to the global diaspora, or participated in government-sponsored information programs advertising opportunities in SRS. Like the Chinese huqiao entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia whom Ong (1999) writes about, some diaspora Somalis were (at least publicly and on social media) enthusiastic about re-engaging with a deeply authoritarian regime. The more everyday level of participation in SRS discourse was subtle acquiescence to the regional dictatorship, in hopes that it would not last too long.

Based on participant-observation and interviews conducted in Jigjiga and in Atlanta, Georgia, diaspora desires to return to Ethiopia shaped what they were willing to say publicly about the SRS administration. All had family connections there. Many had built houses or were planning to build them for eventual retirement. Others had business interests were reluctant to risk them. Some of those with material interests in Jigjiga who quietly critiqued the administration in private also argued that on the positive side they had become “more Ethiopian” since ʿAbdi’s new federalism initiatives (see also Thompson 2017). The strategic creation of border-dependent economic activities can be understood as leveraging border control as one aspect of a broader effort to construct what Foucault (2007, 108) terms “governmentality”: the production and enabling of desired behaviors, in place of (or alongside) the restriction and disciplining of undesired behaviors, in pursuit of security.

From this perspective, SRS can be seen as the center of a new regime of “graduated sovereignty” (Ong 1999, 7) in which Ethiopian citizens within the region are subjected to more disciplinary governance through border control, while this same border control gives regional elites and diaspora businesspeople targeted opportunities. The story, however, is not only about markets, but also about what Ong (1999, 3) terms “novel articulations between the regimes of the family, the state, and capital.” Substantial evidence indicates that regional officials utilized their control over borders to create opportunities, while also using their control over the SRS population to establish threats against diaspora Somalis’ kin who lived in Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch (2016) documented how Somalis protesting ʿAbdi’s rule during his June 2016 visit to Australia discovered “that several dozen of their relatives in Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State had been arrested and detained due to their involvement in the Melbourne protest.”

Diaspora investors in Jigjiga were universally cognizant of these threats. As described above, Musa, an investor from the Persian Gulf, was one of only a few diaspora investors I interviewed who specifically reported threats against family members as a reason for engaging with SRS. However, Ethiopian nationals frequently expressed fear that they would be arrested because of something their diaspora relatives posted on social media. They sometimes encouraged relatives abroad to come and invest and develop productive relationships with SRS rather than continuing to protest. Such fears affect diaspora lives and behaviors abroad. “When I came, [I thought] now I will be in a free country,” Human Rights Watch (2016) reports one diaspora Ethiopian-Somali in Australia as saying. “To be in Australia and be scared all the time, it doesn’t go together.” Such subjectivities point to the importance of theorizing African governance strategies beyond the local scene and understanding how they may extend their influence by differentially and unevenly “governmentalizing” populations abroad.

It may appear surprising from a Western perspective that diaspora Somalis aware of these threats and problems would actively seek to re-engage with SRS. In a sense, it counters expectations that government accountability and transparency are fundamental to attracting business investment and creating market opportunities. However, in practice the choice of investment for Ethiopian Somalis in diaspora is not a decision based solely on market-oriented rationality and anticipation of profits, though I have argued that business interests do play a role. There are multiple rationalities at work in these interactions. Individual agency takes on a different meaning for people committed to supporting relatives in Africa, or otherwise caught up in kinship and other forms of transnational obligation that governments can leverage alongside incentives to manage such populations. Family connections, felt precarity in the global North, and anticipations of eventual possible return migration to the Horn had already primed many diaspora Somalis to at least be open to the possibilities of re-engaging with Ethiopia following the introduction of “new federalism” in 2010. The strategic creation of a host of border-dependent economic opportunities in SRS provided the final incentive necessary to push some diaspora Somalis to make an attempt at investment in the historically war-torn region, and in many cases to ingratiate themselves to officials who controlled Ethiopia’s international and internal borders. New enactments of federalism, and specifically new regional controls over border trade and security, had become one tool by which Ethiopian officials could work to respatialize their territorial control into a modicum of governance over a highly mobile and global diaspora population.

Conclusion

Taking as a starting point the understanding of “borders as resources” advanced in borderlands studies (Anderson and O’Dowd 1999; Feyissa and Hoehne 2010), I have suggested that rearrangements of local border regulation in an out-of-the-way African borderland may reconfigure translocal economies stretching into other continents. Based on participant-observation and interviews in Jigjiga, at Ethiopian borders, and among diaspora Somalis, the argument reframes Ethiopian federalism from an issue of regional identity-based territorial and political fragmentation into a complex transnational conjuncture of interests that imbricate territorial and non-territorial modes of governance and incentivization.

This argument complexifies current Eurocentric emphases on border proliferation and the “externalization” and “overdetermination” of global North borders that restrict African mobilities and entrench international separation. To be sure, increasingly securitized regimes restricting migration from Africa are real and important. Yet such highly securitized and often technologized Euro-American border interventions represent only part of the story of geopolitical borders’ roles in transforming relationships between Africa and the rest of the world. African officials may strategically use border management strategies in conjunction with other technologies such as governance through kinship links to “governmentalize” people beyond their territories. The dynamics and effects of such border-centric transformations in transnational relations may in some cases be less visible and more subtle than the highly securitized border fences and violent policing strategies that understandably occupy much of the popular imagination about geopolitical borders. That does not make them less important for understanding African borders. These more complex understandings of borders’ roles point beyond one-dimensional conceptions of borders restricting Africans’ global mobility, and show how such restrictions might enhance transnational opportunities for some African diaspora groups.

The relationship between border regulation and diaspora engagement in SRS also suggests more broadly how we might reenvision “local” border control in Africa (and potentially elsewhere) in terms of a broader field of state and non-state actors, potentially positioned outside of the territory in question. Borders can serve as resources for people far beyond the immediate scene, such as diaspora traders working through intermediaries and clients to import goods into tightly controlled markets. They can also serve as resources for officials seeking to influence such people beyond official territorial control. Research on African borders has rightly foregrounded the relevance of everyday and informal enactments of sovereignty as modes of governing borderlands. It remains to conceptualize broader fields of power that take shape as African officials work to concatenate governance over territory with governance over deterritorialized populations, including diasporas living in global centers of power.

In August 2018, ʿAbdi Iley was forcibly removed from power, and diaspora investment in the region has not yet been subject to systematic research since then. Ongoing tensions between regional and federal governments in Ethiopia herald potential transformations in the practice of federalism within the country. Finally, the diasporic side of SRS-diaspora relations has not been adequately explored: questions remain regarding how new opportunities for investment in Africa have affected patterns of diaspora life and business in countries where the Ethiopian-Somali diaspora is concentrated, such as the US, UK, Canada, and Sweden. Focusing on diaspora engagement in border-dependent opportunities in SRS, I have tentatively suggested that governance of trade at international and intranational borders has created new means by which Ethiopian officials can control aspects of diaspora life. It remains to be seen how durable this influence might be, and what longer-term effects it might have.

Acknowledgement

I thank Olivier Walther and three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Research presented in this article was supported by the National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (Award No. 1658234), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Award No. 9478), and Jigjiga University (“Urban economy at the edge,” 2018).

Notes

1 All names for informants are pseudonyms.

2 The Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority makes no secret of this fact, publishing an example in a 2017 customs guide in which an item valued at 200,000 birr (about US $8000) requires a total duty and tax of 352,480 (about $14,100) to import (“Ethiopian Customs Guide” 2017, 118).