UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST

Institute For Development StudiesPDS 804s

Sociology And Economics Of Conflicts

TOPIC:Economic And Political Causes Of Civil Wars In

Africa

BY PROF. JOHN C. ANYANWU

NAMES INDEX NUMBERS

MWINSIGTENG CORNELIUS MWINBOBRA..................... SS/PDS/14/0006ADAMTEY EBENEZER……………………………………… SS/PDS/14/0029AKPARIBO AMINU…………………………………………… SS/PDS/14/0034AHMED REGINA……………………………………………… SS/PDS/14/0038DOWUONA-ANIM JOYCE…………………………………… SS/PDS/14/0039MENSAH ATTO EDWARD…………………………………... SS/PDS/14/0011OHENE-AMOH CHARLES………………………………… SS/PDS/14/0035

GROUP 4

INTRODUCTION

• Civil war has become the prime Civil war has become the prime form of violence globally.form of violence globally.

• Africa is the most conflict ridden Africa is the most conflict ridden region of the Worldregion of the World

• Out of the 78 war outbreaks between (1960-1999) 40 (or 51.28 percent) occurred in Africa.

AFRICA AND CIVIL WAR AFRICA AND CIVIL WAR

In this paper, the author investigated the causes of civil war:

Whether civil wars in Africa have Economic and political causes.

Civil war is defined as an internal war in which:

Military action was involved,

The national government at the time was actively involved,

CIVIL WAR(Singer and Small, 2004)

Effective resistance –• weaker to the stronger force• occurred on both sides,

At least 1,000 deaths resulted in the conflict Per Year.

THE THEORY OF CIVIL WAR

OUTBREAK

Using the following six variables to explain the onset of civil war in Africa: •GDP per capita growth rate.•The amount of Natural resources.•Peace duration. •Democracy.•Social fractionalization.•Population size.

LOGIT MODELS

• Civil wars have Economic and Political causes based on the.

• They manifest in:

• Greed (Loot seeking) and

• Grievance (Justice seeking)

COLLIER-HOEFFLER THEORY

GREED (LOOT SEEKING)Desire for private gain:

•Sell weapons to groups•Opportunity for extortion from civilian•To implement a system of gov’t •Get rid of an enemy•Loot natural resources

JUSTICE SEEKING/ GRIEVANCES•Ethnic dominance •Poor economic condition•High inflation •Income inequality•Ruined hopes after transition•Unfulfilled promises•High unemployment•Currency depreciation •Discrimination

LE BILLON’S TYPOLOGY • The risk of civil war increases as

natural resources also increases.

• The risk decreases as the opportunity cost of rebellion increases.

• Rebellion may occur when forgone income is low as compared to MpCI

COLLIER AND HOEFFLER (2001)• Points out another dimension of

opportunity for civil war- weak government.

• Social cohesion- ethnic and religious diversity in the country tends to reduce onset of civil war.

THE THEORY OF HEGRE, ET AL (2001)

• They emphasis on the importance of political stability and its impact on the outbreak of civil war.

• The level of democracy has a bearing on the onset of civil war.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

THE DATA FOR THE STUDY•The primary data (1960-1999) on 161 countries organized in five-year panels of 8.

•Secondary data mainly drawn from Sorli (2002) as a modification of Collier and Hoeffler (2002).

•Pooled logit model of 6 variables.

The basic model is: Pr(WARSA 1960-1999)= f (E, D, P, R, S, A), Where E denotes economic variables(GDP per capita and GDP growth rate). D denotes demographic variables (population size and geographic dispersion).

THE METHOD/ MODEL

P means the political variables (peace duration, minimum democracy and transition).R denotes resources (primary commodity exports to GDP ratio and its squared term). S denotes socio-cultural variables (caused by social fractionalization and ethnic dominance), and A denotes Sub-Saharan Africa.

THE HYPOTHESIS

Pr(WARSA) 1960-1999 - Based on the above specification, they tested three key hypotheses:

H1: Economic development (GDP per capita, GDP growth rate, primary commodity exports GDP ratio and its squared term) is significantly and negatively associated with civil war onset in Africa)

H2: Democracy should reduce the onset of civil war in Africa. Also political transition has proximate cause of civil war in Africa. H3: Ethnic fractionalization should be significantly associated with civil war onset in Africa. Both high and low levels of fractionalisation can reduce the onset of civil war in Africa.

RESULTS OF THE STUDY

EMPIRICAL RESULTSH1: Economic development is associated with civil war onset in Africa.It was discovered that war episodes were preceded by lower growth rates.

The presence of natural resources (proxied by primary exports-GDP ratio) seems to provide easily “lootable” assets for “loot-seeking”

This result is consistent with evidence that the lower the rate of growth, the higher is the probability of unconstitutional political change (Alesina et al, 1996)

With respect to demographic variables, the data shows that war is likely in Africa countries with larger populations.

Increases in war outbreak were partly due to rebel responses to financial opportunities in Africa contrary to the findings of Collier and Hoeffler (2000, 2001, 2002).

They accepted the hypothesis that economic development is significantly associated with the onset of civil war in Africa.

H2: Democracy should reduce the onset of civil war in Africa. Democracy is clearly significant

and negatively associated with civil war onset in Africa (Elbadawi and Sambanis (2002)

Lengthy peace duration reduces grievance and war episodes.

Democracy shows to be an important explanatory variable, and yields strength to a more traditional “grievance-based” and liberal peace-rooted explanation of civil war.

Thus, they accept the hypothesis that democracy reduces the onset of civil war in Africa.

H3: Ethnic fractionalization should be associated with civil war onset in Africa. The data suggests that social

fractionalization is important to peace.

That social cohesion enhances opportunity for peace.

Ethnic dominance is more common in peace episodes than in war episodes.

There is a positive association between ethnic dominance and civil war in Africa.

Africa is characterized by high degree of religious and ethnic fractionalization.

Civil war arises because fewer African societies are characterized by ethnic dominance.

This means that cohesion is effective for social fractionalization which makes a society greatly safer.

They accepted the hypothesis that ethnic fractionalization is significantly and negatively associated with civil war onset in Africa.

GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

THE POLICY IMPLICATIONTo prevent conflict situations in African countries.

There must be the combination of:•Economic diversification, •Poverty reduction•Population reduction,•Political reforms

CRITIQUE Democratic nations in Africa are

not always more peaceful.

Some countries in Africa do not have much natural resources but engage in civil war.

The pace of political reforms toward better governance and improved political rights should be accelerated in Africa given that the results have shown that democracy is useful tool to reduce conflicts.

Economic dev must be complemented by political dev. and liberalization to attain an amplified effect of PEACE in Africa.

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CONCLUSION