IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/esocpu/35.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mining Competition and Violent Conflict in Africa: Pitting Against Each Other

Author

Listed:
  • Anouk S. Rigterink

    (Durham University)

  • Tarek Ghani

    (Washington University St. Louis)

  • Juan Sebastian Lozano

    (Princeton University)

  • Jacob N. Shapiro

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

Explanations for the well-established relationship between mining and conflict interpret violence near resource extraction sites as part of conflict over territory or government. We provide evidence that competition between artisanal and industrial miners is also an important source of natural resources related conflict, from qualitative case studies at mining sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe and a large-N analysis. For the latter, we use machine learning to estimate the feasibility of artisanal mining across the continent of Africa based on geological conditions. We find the impact of price shocks on violent conflict is roughly three times as large in locations with industrial mining where artisanal mining is feasible as it is in places with industrial mining but no potential for artisanal mining. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 31 to 55% of the observed mining-conflict relationship is due to violent industrial-artisanal miner competition. This implies new avenues for conflict-mitigation.

Suggested Citation

  • Anouk S. Rigterink & Tarek Ghani & Juan Sebastian Lozano & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2023. "Mining Competition and Violent Conflict in Africa: Pitting Against Each Other," Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) Working Papers 35, Empirical Studies of Conflict Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:esocpu:35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://esoc.princeton.edu/WP35
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Democratic Republic of Congo; Zimbabwe; DRC; Civil War; Insurgency; Terrorism Violence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q34 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • L72 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Mining, Extraction, and Refining: Other Nonrenewable Resources

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:esocpu:35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://esoc.princeton.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.