The spatial effects of violent political events on mortality in countries of Africa

Abstract

Mortality due to violent conflicts or political events (whether interstate, civil wars or conflicts between antagonistic groups, etc.) in countries of Africa is an issue of great concern due to the high number of victims and constant violation of human rights, which occurs daily. The participation of different types of actors, among them rebels, ethnic groups and regular troops, in these violent processes has been widely studied in numerous theoretical works based on a process of perception and intuition. This paper uses spatial modelling methods to empirically examine how these different groups of actors explain the mortality of violent political events in African countries in the period 2014–2015. The main contributions of this work consist in identifying the actors that have the greatest impact on mortality in Africa, as well as the spatial contagion effect caused by them. The results can be of use to policymakers for the design and implementation of geopolitical strategies based on more efficient empirical data with a view to reducing the mortality these actors cause in violent political events.