The 4-day African Borderlands Research Network, ABORNE conference has opened a wider debate on Africa’s border security, mobility and regional integration, with Nigeria pushing a more digital and intelligence-led approach to border management.
The 2026 conference is being hosted by Lagos State University (LASU) and the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). It is bringing together more than 150 scholars, policymakers and practitioners from Africa and beyond.
The ABORNE conference is themed “The Connected Borderlands, Socio-Cultural Integration, and the Centrality of Policy, Research and Security.”
The meeting placed discussions on border security alongside migration, technology, trade, research and the livelihoods of border communities. They have also highlighted the growing need for African institutions to develop home-grown knowledge for managing the continent’s complex borderlands.
ABORNE conference: NIS pushes smarter border management
Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Kemi Nana Nandap, said Nigeria’s border management system was undergoing significant transformation.
She linked the changes to evolving migration patterns, regional integration, cross-border economic activity, technology and emerging security threats.
“Borders must be understood not merely as geographical lines separating sovereign states, but as dynamic spaces where families remain connected, communities interact, cultures converge, livelihoods are sustained, and legitimate trade and movement take place,” Nandap said.
However, she warned that conventional border controls alone could no longer address the range of threats facing modern states.
“Physical patrols by immigration officers and document inspection remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient on their own,” she said.
Nandap identified human trafficking, migrant smuggling, identity fraud, organised crime, terrorism and cyber-enabled threats as increasingly transnational challenges.
She said the NIS was therefore combining officers’ experience and judgement with technology, intelligence and stronger institutional cooperation.
The approach also extends to passenger processing at Nigeria’s international airports. Nandap said automated border control systems, including e-gates, were transforming border processing through biometric identity verification.
She said investments were also being made in surveillance systems, command and control capabilities, communications infrastructure and integrated border and data platforms.
The objective, according to her, is to help officers identify risks earlier and make faster, better-informed decisions.
It is also intended to improve operational coordination and facilitate the movement of legitimate travellers.
“The border of the future will be more digital. It will be more biometric and intelligence-led, but it must also remain human-centred,” Nandap said.
The approach is consistent with the wider direction of international aviation border management. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) says automated border control can improve security while making passenger clearance more efficient.
Nandap, however, stressed that technology would not replace the human element.
She said professionalism, experience, judgement and integrity remained indispensable to border management.
She also placed border communities at the centre of the security conversation.
According to her, communities living around border areas possess knowledge that technology cannot replicate. They should therefore be treated as partners in creating safer and more resilient borderlands.
“They should therefore not be regarded merely as populations residing at the geographical margins of the state, but as essential stakeholders and strategic partners in promoting secure, peaceful, resilient, and prosperous borderlands,” she said.
ABORNE conference challenges borderland stereotypes
Meanwhile, Chairman of the African Borderlands Research Network, Professor Paul Nugent, broadened the conversation beyond security.
Nugent said borderlands were frequently portrayed through myths and stereotypes, despite their role as centres of economic, cultural and social dynamism.
“Part of what our members have tried to do is to counter the many myths and stereotypes and to show that the ways in which borderlands are often sites of dynamism,” he said.
He pointed to urban development and cultural creativity as examples of the realities often overlooked in discussions about border communities.
Nugent said the objective should be to generate interventions that improve conditions for people living in borderlands rather than stigmatise them.
He also called for stronger African ownership of borderland scholarship.
According to him, ABORNE has members across Europe and Africa but wants to consolidate its African presence.
“We want to make ABORNE an African-led border network,” Nugent said.
That ambition gives the ABORNE conference a significance beyond the current gathering.
Nugent further welcomed LASU’s growing role in borderland studies, saying African universities need stronger programmes that examine migration and trade in a holistic manner.
He said research should not treat migration, trade, security and border communities as completely separate issues.
LASU links border research to policy and security
Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University, Professor Ibiyemi Ibilola Olatunji-Bello, reinforced the argument for a broader understanding of borders.
She said borders should not be treated simply as territorial lines.
“The theme invites us to look beyond the border as a line and to see the borderland as a living space where people, cultures, languages, markets, and histories intersect,” Olatunji-Bello said.
She described Lagos as an appropriate location for the ABORNE conference because of its history as a meeting point for people, cultures, commerce and ideas.
She also highlighted Lagos’ position along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor and its importance to West Africa’s networks of movement, trade and regional integration.
For LASU, Olatunji-Bello said, borderlands are not merely an academic subject.
She said they are part of the environment within which the university teaches, conducts research and serves society.
The Vice-Chancellor disclosed that LASU has established a Bachelor of Arts programme in Border and Migration Studies.
The programme, she said, would help develop scholars and professionals capable of understanding borders through the lenses of migration, livelihoods, identity, security and development.
“Africa needs a new generation of scholars and professionals who understand that borders are not merely questions of territorial sovereignty,” she said.
She said universities must therefore do more than observe borderland realities.
They must help understand those realities and contribute to policies and practices that govern them.
The position places research at the centre of border management, alongside operational security and technology.
It also reinforces the central message of the ABORNE conference that border policy cannot succeed when security agencies, researchers, policymakers and communities operate separately.
For Nandap, the ultimate objective is not simply to make Nigeria’s borders harder to cross.
It is to make them smarter, safer and better connected.
For Nugent, the priority is ensuring that Africa develops the research capacity to understand its borderlands on their own terms.
For Olatunji-Bello, universities must provide the knowledge needed to shape better policies and practices.
Together, their interventions have expanded the ABORNE conference beyond a conventional border security discussion.
