Urban-Rural Geographies of Political Violence in North and West Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper assesses the relationship between population density and political violence within North and West Africa. We find that while most violence currently occurs in rural areas, it also exhibits a classic distance-decay effect, commonly occurring near urbanized places. Regional differences are evident as Jihadist-led violence is increasingly rural in West Africa while urban violence was more common in North Africa. Important difference in states with major conflict are also present, exemplified by urbanized violence in Nigeria and rural violence in Mali. Our findings therefore provide mixed evidence for the typical “urbanization of conflict” discourse in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• cities
• conflict
• North and West Africa
• political violence
• urbanization

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by OECD Sahel and West Africa Club under grant number AWD09867 and the Economic and Social Research Council under grant number 1926184.