The African Economy and

An econometric model of civil war is applied to the analysis of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Results show that Africa has had a similar incidence of civil conflict to other developing regions, and, with minor exceptions, its conflicts are consistent with the global pattern of behavior. However, the structure of risk dif-fers considerably from other regions. Africa’s economic characteristics have made it more vulnerable to conflict, but this has been offset by social characteristics that make its societies atypically safe. The contrast-ing trends of conflict are analyzed: rising in Africa and declining in other regions. Results show that these trends are predicted by the model. Africa’s rising trend of conflict is due to its atypically poor economic performance. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) stated recently that “Africa is the most conflict ridden region of the World and the only region in which the number of armed conflicts is on the increase ” (SIPRI 1999, 20).1 In this study, we apply the Collier-Hoeffler model of civil conflict (Collier and Hoeffler 1998, 2000) to analyze the incidence of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa2 both relative to other regions and over time. We concentrate on three main questions. First, is Africa systematically different from other regions? We show that over the period from 1965 to 1999, the inci