African borderlands are sites where the state, borderlanders, criminal groups, and other groups compete and cooperate to achieve diverse interests. They are also zones of competing perspectives on security. However, current border security policies and practices operate within a restrictive neorealist theoretical paradigm with the state as the referent object of security thereby ignoring other perspectives on security. The vulnerabilities of borderlanders and the role of the border as a source of livelihood demand new ways of thinking about African borders in order to incorporate these major stakeholders into the bordering process. Although the adoption of the African Union's integrated border management strategy holds the potential to reconcile the needs of borderlanders with the objectives of the state, it remains within the restrictive neorealist framework. This paper argues that an emancipatory security theory provides an appropriate framework to understand African borders and borderlands. This theory holds the key for enhancing the security of African borders by reconciling the needs of borderlanders with the objectives of state security, and thereby making people and communities the referent objects of security. However, the failure of the theory to engage with the concept of power limits its usefulness