Although views to the contrary have occasionally been aired – sometimes underpinned by what seems to be solid empirical research hinting at some degree of African involvement in the drawing up of the continent’s modern borders – it’s widely accepted that Africa’s present-day geographical outline was arbitrarily crafted by European powers when they partitioned the landmass among themselves at the Berlin Conference of 1884/85.

In many instances, the outcome was ethnic partitioning – the imposition of artificial national boundaries that abruptly turned members of the same ethnic group into citizens of different nation States. A case in point is the Fulani community in West Africa, now dispersed across Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal – a diaspora not by choice but by cartography. Also in that neck of the woods, we find the Hausa mainly split between Nigeria and Niger, the Yoruba straddling Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and the Ewe scattered across Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.

Communities that are culturally and linguistically homogeneous but straddle national borders are found in virtually every corner of the continent. In Southern Africa, for instance, inhabitants of the northern tip of South Africa require a passport to cross the Limpopo river into Zimbabwe, yet once they pass immigration they are essentially just home with different paperwork, as Zimbabwe’s southernmost Beitbridge district is inhabited by Venda speakers, just like themselves.

I could go on, and I will – there are Tswanas in South Africa and Botswana, Sothos in South Africa and Lesotho, Shonas in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and, of course, Luos in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Luhyas in Kenya and Uganda.

The absurdity of the colonial lines is best illustrated by the Awori siblings of East Africa, who hail from the Luhya community. The most prominent is Moody Awori, the now 96-year-old who had a lengthy political career that culminated in his appointment as the Vice-President of Kenya in 2003.

Meanwhile, across the border in Uganda, his late younger brother Aggrey also pursued a career in politics, serving as ambassador to the US, Belgium and the EU. When Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986, he was dismissed as an ambassador, prompting him to start a short-lived rebel movement against Museveni. The two later reconciled, and Aggrey Awori went on to serve first as an opposition Parliamentarian and later as Information and Communication Technology Minister in Museveni’s government. He even vied for the Presidency in 2001, coming third. A few decades ago, his wife Thelma was a familiar face on TV screens – even here in South Africa – as the UN Development Programme’s Africa director.

What is not often acknowledged is that ethnic partitioning – this tyranny of the map – and the arbitrariness of the partition of Africa generally have been responsible for more of the wars that have raged in Africa than the continent’s broader colonial experience. Think of the Igbos’ secession bid in Nigeria, which cost about one-million lives. Indeed, a study published in the American Economic Review shows that 20% of all African civil wars had an ethnic secessionist component.

Another study found that civil conflict intensity, indicated by duration and the number of casualties, is about 25% higher in countries where partitioned ethnicities reside than in the homelands of non- partitioned ethnicities.

Additionally, some countries have resorted to using split groups to stage proxy wars against their neighbours. This, by many accounts, is precisely what’s happening in the Great Lakes region, with rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo reportedly fighting alongside their Rwandan kith and kin.

It has also been demonstrated that discrimination in the political sphere is ten percentage points higher for partitioned ethnicities than for their non-partitioned counterparts.

It turns out the pen that drew Africa’s borders was mightier than anyone bargained for.