Author: Olivier J. Walther

The OECD just released a series of four papers on West African border cities. These papers are part of the "Cities and Borders" project that my colleague Leonardo A. Villalón and I coordinated from 2017-2018 in the region. The papers provide a systematic analysis of the role West African border cities play in the process … Continue reading Border cities in West Africa

West Africa is urbanizing at one of the fastest rates in the world. Between 2015 and 2040, the population of the region will double and cities will absorb most of this demographic growth. To better understand urban growth in West Africa, the UF Sahel Research Group will contribute towards the flagship report “Atlas on Cities in … Continue reading An Atlas of African Cities

From 2019-2020, I will be coordinating the new research program on political insecurity of the OECD in collaboration with my colleagues Steve Radil and David Russell. In this new project, our first goal is to develop reliable data on the spatial patterns and social networks of violent extremist organizations in the Sahara-Sahel from the late … Continue reading Foreign interventions and networks of violence in the Sahel

Call for papers: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., 3-7 April, 2019 Session title: Space and social networks Organizers: Steven Radil, University of Idaho; Olivier Walther, University of Florida Session description: The spatial metaphor of the network along with its accompanying abstractions, such as flow, movement, and connectivity, have been central themes throughout … Continue reading AAG 2019 – Space and social networks

In Syria, hundreds of factions operate under dozens of separate organizational command structures. Rather than coalescing into a unified rebel front, rebel groups continue to compete for power, thus failing to develop structures of governance and political authority that cut across factional divides, enclaves and provincial boundaries. Despite the fact that inter-rebel violence is a … Continue reading Why so many rebel groups in Syria?

Illicit financial networks are, by their very nature, difficult to detect and, therefore, difficult to study. Much of the information on individuals and their activities is either classified or unknown. Nonetheless, tracking how terrorists raise, move, store and use money is fundamental to deter and discourage terrorist networks. In a new chapter published in the … Continue reading Applying Social Network Analysis to terrorist financing

More than 50 years have passed since the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was created in Addis Ababa on 25 May 1963. Yet, despite the many charters signed, the numerous meetings called, and the countless strategic frameworks drawn up on paper, regional integration has led to disappointing outcomes. In the newly published Routledge Handbook of … Continue reading Regional integration in Africa

Women play a key role in West Africa's food economy. Yet, the functioning of their trade networks is still relatively unknown. To better understand how women do business in the region and what obstacles they face, the OECD Sahel and West Africa Club asked us to map the network that connects the actors involved in … Continue reading Mapping rice trade networks

In recent years, large-scale research programs, such as BIG or AFRIGOS, have been launched in different parts of the world to examine border conflicts, cross-border cooperation, regional trade, or transnational migration. We, border scholars, travel more, meet more people at exciting conferences, and submit more proposals. But when it comes to publishing, we still write alone. … Continue reading Enduring divisions within border studies

My interest in West African cities owes much to the fact that I received a joint PhD in geography from the University of Lausanne and the University of Rouen . In Lausanne, my supervisor was Professor Jean-Bernard Racine, one of the pioneers of the New Geography in the 1970s, and a recipient of the Vautrin … Continue reading Academic genealogy