TRACE—Trade, Rents, and Authority in borderland Checkpoint Economies

Background

Across conflict-affected borderlands, checkpoints and roadblocks are not merely signs of disorder or state absence. They are key institutions through which armed actors, communities, and traders regulate circulation, extract rents, and negotiate authority. Yet most policy and academic approaches remain state-centric, treating checkpoints primarily as symptoms of predation or failed governance. TRACE challenges this view by conceptualizing borderlands as heterarchical political spaces, where authority is distributed across multiple actors and varies significantly across routes, commodities, and local moral economies.

Focusing on eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and its trade corridors toward Rwanda and Uganda, TRACE situates checkpoints within wider struggles over trade, livelihoods, and geopolitical competition. It also places these dynamics in comparative perspective by examining similar configurations across other conflict-affected borderlands.

Objectives

Funded by the FCDO's XCEPT programme, TRACE pursues three interlinked objectives:
•To develop a typology of checkpoint geographies that captures how authority and rents are centralized, diffused, or socially embedded along trade routes.
•To examine how extraversion—integration into global commodity chains—reshapes checkpoint practices, often regularizing informal taxation while redistributing its social costs.
•To generate policy-relevant insights that distinguish exploitative checkpoint systems from those that function as coping or redistribution mechanisms under conditions of protracted conflict.

Project components

The project has two main components:
1.DRC case study
An in-depth empirical study of checkpoint economies in eastern DR Congo, with particular attention to contrasting configurations along Rwanda- and Uganda-facing corridors. Using participatory mapping, key informant interviews, and commodity-chain analysis, this component traces how rents are extracted and redistributed, and how checkpoint governance shapes local livelihoods, legitimacy, and development outcomes.
2.Comparative working paper series
A set of peer-reviewed working papers examining checkpoint configurations in other conflict-affected geographies. These papers challenge and refine the TRACE typology, enabling cross-regional comparison and cumulative theory building on borderland authority and the politics of circulation.

Expected outputs
•A bilingual (English/French) case study report on checkpoints and cross-border trade in eastern DR Congo
•A series of peer-reviewed working papers on checkpoint economies across conflict-affected borderlands
•Visual and cartographic outputs, including interactive maps
•Policy-oriented insights to inform humanitarian access strategies, conflict-sensitive trade interventions, and diplomatic engagement

By treating checkpoints not as aberrations but as sites of political experimentation, TRACE contributes a new analytical framework for understanding authority, distribution, and governance in conflict-affected borderlands, with direct relevance for research, policy, and practice.