I have made several maps showing the location, built-up area, economic importance and accessibility of West African border markets since the early 2010s.
My first map showed the location of all West African border markets in 2013. It was made with Google Maps when I started to work on border cities, as part of the CROSSTRADE project funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund. It showed 141 markets from Banjul to N’Djamena.
West African border markets, 2013
The map above was published in the OECD Atlas of the Sahara-Sahel in 2014. It shows the location of 134 border markets and some other Saharan border cities.
West African border markets and Saharan border agglomerations, 2014
The map was updated and used to calculate the accessibility of 135 markets in the OECD report Cross-border Co-operation and Policy Networks in West Africa (2017). The map below only shows the markets of eastern Guinea.
Population potential of border markets of eastern Guinea, 2017
Our accessibility model was applied to all 245 West African cities with more than 10 000 inhabitants located less than 20 km from a land border in 2015. The results were published in the report Accessibility and Infrastructure in Border Cities (2019) and in the Journal of Transport Geography (2020) with my colleagues Lawali Dambo, Moustapha Kone and Michiel van Eupen.
Olivier J. Walther 