The impact of terrorism on agriculture in African countries

Despite the key role of agricultural development in the fight against hunger and the achievement of food security, little is known on the cross‐country effect of terrorism on agriculture. At the same time, there is some tentative evidence suggesting that conflicts reduce agricultural inputs and outputs such as land, production and income. This paper contributes to this emerging literature by investigating how terrorism affects agriculture on a panel of 48 African countries over the period 1998–2016. Six terrorism indicators are used, namely: domestic terrorism, transnational terrorism, unclear terrorism, total terrorism, number of attacks and number of deaths due to terrorism. Three agricultural indicators are used, namely: inputs (consisting of agricultural land and labour) and output (consisting of agricultural productivity growth). Using the generalized method of moments, the following findings are established. First, while transnational terrorism, unclear terrorism, the number of attacks and the number of deaths due to terrorism are positively associated with agricultural land, domestic and total terrorism reduce agricultural land. Second, all the terrorism indicators are negatively associated with agricultural productivity growth and agricultural labour in African countries. Globally, terrorism and terrorist threats are causing a decline in agricultural activity in Africa.