2014-02: The geographic spillover of armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa (Working paper)

Abstract

Anecdotal accounts of the geographical spread of war inevitably involve Sub-Sahara African countries. But is the conflict spillover effect effectively stronger in Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere? To answer this question, we specify a dynamic spatial panel model and estimate it for two separate samples: the group of all Sub-Saharan Africa countries and a group of other emerging and developing economies. It turns out that the conflict spillover is stronger and more persistent over time in the latter. However, when attention is restricted to civil wars, the contemporaneous spillover effect is stronger in Sub-Saharan Africa. One extra year of war in the neighbourhood of a generic Sub-Saharan African country in a given decade results in about three more weeks of war in that country in the same decade. This spillover effect is significantly stronger for civil wars than it is for interstate wars. However, the effect is halved after one decade. We argue that even if not quantitatively large, policymakers should not understate its importance and intervene to prevent possible regional escalation of violence.