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Abstract

Terrorism remains a major security and development challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), yet the influence of socioeconomic conditions on terrorist activity remains unclear. This study examined the relationships between poverty, unemployment, GDP per capita, and terrorist incidents across 45 Sub-Saharan African countries using a quantitative explanatory design and secondary panel data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI). Terrorism trends were analyzed for 1970–2020, while inferential analyses focused on 2000–2020 because of greater socioeconomic data availability. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and negative binomial regression analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics. Pearson correlation revealed no significant bivariate relationships between terrorist incidents and the socioeconomic variables. Univariable negative binomial regression showed that poverty was positively associated with terrorist incidents, whereas GDP per capita exhibited a small but significant negative association. However, after adjustment for the other predictors, GDP per capita became positively associated with terrorist incidents, unemployment was negatively associated with terrorist incidents, and poverty was no longer significant. Overall, the multivariable model was statistically significant, indicating that the socioeconomic variables jointly explained variation in terrorist incidents. The findings suggest that terrorism in SSA is influenced by a complex interaction of socioeconomic, political, institutional, and security factors, underscoring the need for integrated, evidence-based counterterrorism and development policies.

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