Securing vast territories requires a more mobile approach to border security
Africa is often described as a continent fragmented into many relatively small states. The geography tells a different story.
The scale of Africa’s territories is often underestimated. The average African country covers approximately 562,000 km², more than twice the European average. Twelve African countries extend beyond one million square kilometres, with Algeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo among the continent’s largest.
At the same time, the continent has approximately 109 interstate borders and only around 350 official border crossings.
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This combination of enormous territories, long borders and relatively few controlled crossing points creates a fundamental security challenge: How can a state maintain effective security presence across territory that cannot realistically be covered by permanent infrastructure?
Permanent checkpoints alone cannot provide the necessary coverage, particularly across vast and remote territories where security capabilities need to be deployed as conditions change.
Size itself is not the problem. The challenge emerges when governments cannot maintain effective control, surveillance and response capabilities across large parts of their territory. This is particularly relevant where borders cross deserts, forests, mountains, coastlines and sparsely populated regions
The vast territories of countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Algeria, Angola, Mali, Sudan, Mozambique and Chad have therefore always been more than a geographic consideration. They are a security factor.
But perhaps the greater challenge is what happens between states.
From the Horn of Africa along the Indian Ocean, through Central Africa and the Lake Chad Basin, across the Sahel and towards the Atlantic coast, remote and porous borders are exploited by increasingly sophisticated criminal networks. Weapons, drugs, trafficked people and illegal goods move across these borders. Trafficking routes can change quickly once authorities begin to identify them.
South American cocaine networks, for example, have increasingly exploited weakly monitored entry points along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, creating new logistics corridors towards the Sahel, North Africa and ultimately Europe.
The Sahel-Sahara corridor presents an even greater geographic challenge. Thousands of kilometres of remote territory provide opportunities for drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking and other illicit economies.
The challenge therefore extends beyond border control to the ability of states to maintain an effective security presence across remote and difficult to monitor territories.
Governments across Africa have long recognised these challenges, but the difficulty often lies in developing an operational model capable of responding effectively across large and remote territories.
Periodic security operations can disrupt trafficking routes, but criminal organisations adapt quickly by changing routes, shifting crossing points and reorganising their logistics networks.
Permanent checkpoints face the opposite problem: they provide continuous capability, but only where they have been established. Criminal networks can simply avoid them by moving to less controlled routes.
Modern border security therefore requires a different principle:
“Do not assume the threat will come to the checkpoint. Bring the checkpoint to the threat.”
Mobility allows governments to deploy advanced inspection, surveillance and command capabilities wherever intelligence, operational requirements or emerging threats demand them
From mobile screening to mobile security ecosystems
There is no single technology capable of securing a border.
Effective border management requires layers: intelligence, identification, surveillance, inspection, communications, enforcement and response.
This is why unival increasingly approaches mobile security not as a single vehicle or technology, but as a deployable security ecosystem.
Different missions require different platforms.
MBX Backscatter Van - rapid contraband detection
The unival MBX Backscatter Van is designed for mobile inspection operations where authorities need to rapidly examine vehicles for concealed contraband.
Backscatter X-ray technology is effective in detecting organic materials and anomalies associated with narcotics, explosives and other concealed substances.
Its operational value lies in its mobility. Rather than waiting for suspicious vehicles to arrive at a permanent inspection facility, authorities can deploy screening capability closer to trafficking routes, temporary checkpoints, ports, border regions or intelligence led operations.
MXV-DV - comprehensive mobile X-ray inspection
Where greater inspection depth and dual-view imaging are required, the MXV-DV Dual View Mobile X-ray Inspection Vehicle provides a comprehensive mobile screening platform.
It combines X-ray inspection with an integrated operational environment and support customs, border security, law enforcement and high-security screening missions.
Additional surveillance components, including drones, can extend the operational perimeter beyond the vehicle itself.
This transforms the platform from an inspection vehicle into a mobile security node capable of supporting both screening and situational awareness.
MSS - deployable security where infrastructure does not exist
Not every operation requires vehicle X-ray screening. Sometimes the requirement is to establish a controlled security environment quickly where none previously existed.
The unival MSS Mobile Security Station provides a deployable platform for checkpoint operations, identity and document verification, communications, surveillance and other security technologies depending on the mission.
Temporary border crossings, roadblocks, critical infrastructure sites, humanitarian corridors or tactical checkpoints can therefore gain capabilities that would otherwise require permanent facilities.
One mission - different tools
The MBX, MXV-DV and MSS are not competing solutions. They address different layers of the same operational problem.
A counter-narcotics operation may prioritise the MBX, while deeper vehicle inspection may require the MXV-DV. Remote border operations requiring identification, surveillance and checkpoint infrastructure may use an MSS.
Complex operations can combine these platforms with surveillance, drones, identity management, communications and command systems.
Together, they create a modular security architecture that can be configured around the mission and repositioned as needs change.
Security on wheels
Permanent infrastructure will remain essential at major ports, airports and established border crossings, but it cannot provide the complete answer to changing security threats.
Mobile security gives governments greater operational flexibility, allowing assets to be repositioned according to intelligence, capabilities to be shared between regions and agencies, and new trafficking corridors to be addressed without waiting for permanent infrastructure.
This is particularly important where criminal organisations exploit the distance between state institutions and remote territories.
The power of presence
Technology alone will never eliminate trafficking, terrorism or organised crime, but it can change the environment in which these organisations operate.
A border with little probability of inspection can gain advanced screening capability, while remote roads and trafficking corridors can be addressed through rapidly deployed checkpoints and security assets.
This uncertainty makes it harder for hostile actors to predict where authorities have the capability to detect and intercept them.
The threat is mobile.
Security must be mobile too.
Mobile security gives authorities the flexibility to deploy screening, inspection and surveillance capabilities where they are needed, from remote borders and temporary checkpoints to emerging trafficking routes.
unival group provides a range of mobile screening solutions designed to support changing operational requirements and extend security capabilities beyond fixed infrastructure.