The Contradictions of Pre-election Violence: The Effects of Violence on Voter Turnout in Sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorina A. Bekoe ◽  
Stephanie M. Burchard
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Suppressive Effect ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Anecdotal Evidence ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Effects Of Violence ◽  
Election Violence

Abstract:Politicians often foment violence before elections to reduce competitiveness and, hence, increase their chances of winning. Given that fear and intimidation may be used to prevent voters from casting their ballots, many case studies, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that electoral violence has a suppressive effect on voter turnout. However, until now there has been no large-scale, multi-year analysis on the effect of pre-election violence on one of its primary targets, voter turnout. Looking across sub-Saharan Africa, and more specifically at Kenya, this article examines the influence of pre-election violence on voter turnout and finds, in the aggregate, no significant effect. Nevertheless, electoral violence may be used to depress turnout, to mobilize supporters, or to punish victors. It is a persistent trend in sub-Saharan Africa and one that threatens to undermine democratic development.

scholarly journals Fear of campaign violence and support for democracy and autocracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 073889422110263
Author(s):  
Inken von Borzyskowski ◽  
Ursula Daxecker ◽  
Patrick M. Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Political Psychology ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Election Violence

Election violence is common in many developing countries and has potentially detrimental implications for democratic consolidation. Drawing on political psychology, we argue that citizens’ fear of campaign violence undermines support for democracy while increasing support for autocracy. Using individual-level survey data from 21 electoral democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa, we find robust support for our argument. Citizens fearing campaign violence are less likely to support democracy and multi-party competition, more likely to favor a return to autocracy, and less likely to turn out to vote. Our findings have important implications for democratic survival and provide further impetus for reducing electoral violence.

Perils of pluralism: Electoral violence and incumbency in sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Fernandes Taylor ◽  
Jon CW Pevehouse ◽  
Scott Straus
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Executive Level ◽  
Election Violence

Why do some multiparty elections lead to political violence while others do not? Despite extensive literatures on democratization, civil war, and violence against civilians in civil war, the topic of electoral violence has received less attention. We develop a set of theoretical propositions to explain this variation, testing them on an original dataset on African elections from 1990 to 2008. We find that elections in which an incumbent presidential candidate is running for re-election are significantly more likely to experience electoral violence, both prior to the election and after voting has taken place. We argue that clientelism is behind this pattern, and that clients often resort to electoral violence to protect a reliable incumbent patron. On the other hand, when an incumbent candidate is not running for office, we argue that clients are less willing to assume the risks of participating in electoral violence because candidates in the election have not established a record of delivering patronage at the executive level. We further find some evidence that pre-existing social conflicts increase the risk of pre-election violence. We suggest that this finding is due to the tendency of political elites to mobilize voters around pre-existing political and economic grievances to promote their candidacies, in turn heightening tensions and divisions. We also examine, but find little support for, a number of other possible determinants of electoral violence, such as regime type, income level, international observers, ongoing civil war, pathway to power, and first elections after civil war. The article contributes not only to a small but growing literature on electoral violence but also to a burgeoning literature on political behavior in African elections.

Changing Patterns of Political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate M. Carter ◽  
Scott Straus
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Funding Opportunities

Contrary to common assumption, major forms of large-scale organized political violence in sub-Saharan Africa have declined in frequency and intensity, and the region is not uniquely prone to the onset of warfare. African civil wars in the 2000s and 2010s are less common compared to the mid-1990s. The character of warfare has also changed. Contemporary wars are generally small-scale, fought on state peripheries and increasingly across multiple states, and involve factionalized insurgents who typically cannot hold significant territory or capture state capitals. Episodes of large-scale mass killing of civilians are also on the decline. That said, other forms of political violence that receive less attention in the academic literature are increasing or persistent. These include electoral violence and violence over access to livelihood resources, such as land and water. Geopolitical shifts since the end of the Cold War are a leading candidate to explain the changing frequency and character of warfare in sub-Saharan Africa. New global priorities, including changes in external state funding opportunities for insurgents, an emphasis on change through elections, investments in conflict mediation strategies, and the rise of China are hypothesized as critical factors shaping the new patterns of warfare.

scholarly journals Precision Agriculture for Resource Use Efficiency in Smallholder Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Cecilia M. Onyango ◽  
Justine M. Nyaga ◽  
Johanna Wetterlind ◽  
Mats Söderström ◽  
Kristin Piikki
Keyword(s):  
Resource Use ◽  
Precision Agriculture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
English Language ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Smallholder Farming ◽  
Sub Saharan

Opportunities exist for adoption of precision agriculture technologies in all parts of the world. The form of precision agriculture may vary from region to region depending on technologies available, knowledge levels and mindsets. The current review examined research articles in the English language on precision agriculture practices for increased productivity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 7715 articles were retrieved and after screening 128 were reviewed. The results indicate that a number of precision agriculture technologies have been tested under SSA conditions and show promising results. The most promising precision agriculture technologies identified were the use of soil and plant sensors for nutrient and water management, as well as use of satellite imagery, GIS and crop-soil simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have been shown to be crucial in attainment of appropriate management strategies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource use in SSA. These technologies are important in supporting sustainable agricultural development. Most of these technologies are, however, at the experimental stage, with only South Africa having applied them mainly in large-scale commercial farms. It is concluded that increased precision in input and management practices among SSA smallholder farmers can significantly improve productivity even without extra use of inputs.

Intraclass Correlation Coefficients for Designing Cluster-Randomized Trials in Sub-Saharan Africa Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 500-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Kelcey ◽  
Zuchao Shen ◽  
Jessaca Spybrook
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Randomized Trials ◽  
Intraclass Correlation ◽  
Educational Interventions ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Education Outcomes ◽  
Randomized Studies ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Variance Explained

Objective: Over the past two decades, the lack of reliable empirical evidence concerning the effectiveness of educational interventions has motivated a new wave of research in education in sub-Saharan Africa (and across most of the world) that focuses on impact evaluation through rigorous research designs such as experiments. Often these experiments draw on the random assignment of entire clusters, such as schools, to accommodate the multilevel structure of schooling and the theory of action underlying many school-based interventions. Planning effective and efficient school randomized studies, however, requires plausible values of the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and the variance explained by covariates during the design stage. The purpose of this study was to improve the planning of two-level school-randomized studies in sub-Saharan Africa by providing empirical estimates of the ICC and the variance explained by covariates for education outcomes in 15 countries. Method: Our investigation drew on large-scale representative samples of sixth-grade students in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and includes over 60,000 students across 2,500 schools. We examined two core education outcomes: standardized achievement in reading and mathematics. We estimated a series of two-level hierarchical linear models with students nested within schools to inform the design of two-level school-randomized trials. Results: The analyses suggested that outcomes were substantially clustered within schools but that the magnitude of the clustering varied considerably across countries. Similarly, the results indicated that covariance adjustment generally reduced clustering but that the prognostic value of such adjustment varied across countries.

Land conflicts and social differentiation in eastern Uganda

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Kandel
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
Current Period ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Eastern Uganda

ABSTRACTRising competition and conflict over land in rural sub-Saharan Africa continues to attract the attention of researchers. Recent work has especially focused on land governance, post-conflict restructuring of tenure relations, and large-scale land acquisitions. A less researched topic as of late, though one deserving of greater consideration, pertains to how social differentiation on the local-level shapes relations to land, and how these processes are rooted in specific historical developments. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Teso sub-region of eastern Uganda, this paper analyses three specific land conflicts and situates them within a broad historical trajectory. I show how each dispute illuminates changes in class relations in Teso since the early 1990s. I argue that this current period of socioeconomic transformation, which includes the formation of a more clearly defined sub-regional middle class and elite, constitutes the most prominent period of social differentiation in Teso since the early 20th century.

scholarly journals Resource frontiers and agglomeration economies: The varied logics of transnational land-based investing in Southern and Eastern Africa

AMBIO ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilini Abeygunawardane ◽  
Angela Kronenburg García ◽  
Zhanli Sun ◽  
Daniel Müller ◽  
Almeida Sitoe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Forestry Investments ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Investment Location

AbstractActor-level data on large-scale commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. The peculiar choice of transnational investing in African land has, therefore, been subject to conjecture. Addressing this gap, we reconstructed the underlying logics of investment location choices in a Bayesian network, using firm- and actor-level interview and spatial data from 37 transnational agriculture and forestry investments across 121 sites in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. We distinguish four investment locations across gradients of resource frontiers and agglomeration economies to derive the preferred locations of different investors with varied skillsets and market reach (i.e., track record). In contrast to newcomers, investors with extensive track records are more likely to expand the land use frontier, but they are also likely to survive the high transaction costs of the pre-commercial frontier. We highlight key comparative advantages of Southern and Eastern African frontiers and map the most probable categories of investment locations.

scholarly journals The seasonality of cholera in sub-Saharan Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Perez-Saez ◽  
Justin Lessler ◽  
Elizabeth C. Lee ◽  
Francisco J. Luquero ◽  
Espoir B. Malembaka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Case Fatality ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Gates Foundation

Background Cholera remains a major threat in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where some of the highest case fatality risks are reported. Knowing in what months and where cholera tends to occur across the continent can aid in improving efforts to eliminate cholera as a public health concern; though largely due to lack of unified large-scale datasets, no continent-wide estimates exist. In this study we aim to estimate cholera seasonality across SSA. Methods We leverage the Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC) global cholera database with statistical models to synthesize data across spatial and temporal scale in order to infer the seasonality of excess suspected cholera occurrence in SSA. We developed a Bayesian statistical model to infer the monthly risk of excess cholera at the first and/or second administrative levels. Seasonality patterns were then grouped into spatial clusters. Finally, we studied the association between seasonality estimates and hydro-climatic variables. Findings The majority of studied countries (24/34) have seasonal patterns in excess cholera, corresponding to approximately 85% of the SSA population. Most countries (19/24) also had sub-national differences in seasonality patterns, with strong differences in seasonality strength between regions. Seasonality patterns clustered into two macro-regions (West Africa and the Sahel vs. Eastern and Southern Africa), which were composed of sub-regional clusters with varying degrees of seasonality. Exploratory association analysis found most consistent and positive correlations between cholera seasonality and precipitation, and to a lesser extent with temperature and flooding. Interpretation Widespread cholera seasonality in SSA offers opportunities for intervention planning. Further studies are needed to study the association between cholera and climate. Funding The NASA Applied Sciences Program and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

HIV/AIDS

2020 ◽  
pp. 901-933
Author(s):  
Sarah Fidler ◽  
Timothy E.A. Peto ◽  
Philip Goulder ◽  
Christopher P. Conlon
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The People ◽  
Reduce Life Expectancy ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Living With Hiv ◽  
The Impact

Since its discovery in 1983, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has been associated with a global pandemic that has affected more than 78 million people and caused more than 39 million deaths. Globally, 36.9 million (34.3–41.4 million) people were living with HIV at the end of 2013. An estimated 0.8% of adults aged 15–49 years worldwide are living with HIV, although the burden of the epidemic continues to vary considerably between countries and regions. Sub-Saharan Africa remains most severely affected, with nearly 1 in every 20 adults living with HIV and accounting for nearly 71% of the people living with HIV worldwide. The impact of HIV in some African countries has been sufficient to reverse population growth and reduce life expectancy into the mid-30s, although HIV incidence has declined in some of these high-prevalence countries. However, there are large-scale HIV epidemics elsewhere (e.g. India, the Russian Federation, and Eastern Europe).

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