Consequences of War on African Countries' Social and Economic Development

Abstract

In the post cold war era, most of the wars in the international community have occurred in Third World countries, and African countries have experienced on the average more years of civil and external wars than other Third World countries.1 What are the consequences of war on African societies? Do states involved in war tend to fare worse than those not involved in war? In this paper, data on African countries involved in war and those that were not involved in war between 1960 and 1.983 were examined for evidence of differences in development patterns after war. In contrast to the few studies on the consequences of war, where war was associated with positive development in the European countries, this study posits that wars in African countries are unlikely to produce similar outcomes. Conflicts, which exist on a continuum from low to high intensity, range from individual acts of aggression and protest to organized extreme violence perpetuated by institutions, organizations and countries. Conflicts on the low intensity side of the continuum are less violent, involving few, if any deaths, while conflicts on the other end, called wars, involve numerous deaths. The most intensive end of the continuum-war, defined here as violence sponsored by countries which involves at least 1,000 military troops--was selected as the focus of this research because of an interest in the impact of war on the development of the state. The research interest is in how war influences and changes states' economies and social conditions as indicated by the measures of development (i.e. infant mortality, life expectancy, number of medical doctors and gross domestic product). Thus, the state is the unit of analysis used. Changes in the rates of growth in these indicators of development indicate alterations in social and economic conditions which govern the quality of life within the countries. A subsidiary interest of the study is to ascertain the utility, if any, of older theories about war and development in understanding the situation in African countries.