Arid fields where conflict grows: How drought drives extremist violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

As the effects of climate change grow more severe, scholars and policymakers have paid increased attention to the intersection of climate change and conflict. This paper examines one subset of that intersection: how drought contributes to extremist violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Though qualitative evidence suggests that drought can play a role in driving extremism, no large-N studies have addressed it. I propose a mechanism by which drought contributes to extremist violence by causing a decrease in local economic activity. Since local economic activity data is not available for much of sub-Saharan Africa, I use nightlights as a proxy. This study finds that drought in a district causes its economic activity to be 8.1% lower than a comparable district without any drought, which then leads to a 29.0% higher rate of extremist violence. The effect of drought on extremist violence through this mechanism is statistically significant at the district level. I also conduct a brief case study of Mali to demonstrate how multi-year drought led to lower economic and increased extremism. These findings add to the scholarly debate on climate change’s effect on conflict by providing evidence of a mechanism by which drought can drive extremist violence and by demonstrating the large effect size of that mechanism. They further suggest to policymakers that building resilience to drought is a security imperative.