In recent times, West Africa has (once again) gained international attention as a region hit by various crises. Islamic extremism; transnational drug economies; the smuggling of people, cars, arms, et cetera; as well as transnational interventions have come to most visibly represent particular contemporary globalization processes in West Africa. Paired with already widespread cleavages due to socioeconomic hardship affecting vast percentages of the West African population, these dynamics point to the (violent) reordering of space, described as de- and re-territorialization, and are based on different — often conflicting — ways of (re-)imagining space in Africa. Moreover, the implications of these dynamics appear to reach far beyond the confines of West Africa — as most dramatically evidenced in debates on the current European “refugee crisis” and the fear of terrorist attacks in Europe. Hence, Western powers have come to consider the perceived destabilization of the region and in particular the seeming proliferation of “weak” or “failed states” as a threat to the territorial organization of the international state system and, as such, have intervened in various ways in order to counter the trend.