Is terrorism a spoilsport for the sustainability of economic development?: evidence from the economic community of West African states

Purpose - The objective of this paper is to determine the impact of terrorism on the sustainability of the development of West African countries, highlighting the role and interactions of income inequality and the level of education in this relationship for the period 2000–2019. Design/methodology/approach - The appropriate tests indicated that the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) model is the most suited to analyze the terrorism phenomenon in the study area. Findings - The results confirm the critical challenge to sustain economic development in a context marked by a high risk of terrorist attacks. Fortunately, the negative effect of terrorism on economic development is not a fatality. Ways do exist to limit the magnitude of the phenomenon impacts since the results also revealed that countries with higher percentages of educated people experience a lower magnitude of terrorism impact. Similarly, reducing inequalities is another way of controlling the magnitude of terrorism's impact on development sustainability. Originality/value - This paper aims to contribute to the economic literature on the economic effects of terrorism in two main ways. First, to the author's knowledge, this is the first attempt to establish terrorism implications in terms of development sustainability in the ECOWAS region. The second contribution is that the author tries to find an empirical validation of the hypothesis according to which an increase in the level of education and improvement in income distribution could reduce the impact of terrorism on development sustainability. Peer review - The peer review history for this article is available at:https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0565.