The Gendered Impacts of Armed Conflict on Economic Activity

This project studies the gendered impacts of armed conflict on individuals’ participation in agri-food systems.

Agri-food systems encompass the entire range of value-adding activities in the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as food storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal, and consumption.

The adequate functioning of agri-food systems is the driver of good nutrition outcomes and constitutes a fundamental part of any developing country’s economy. Yet, agri-food systems and rural populations around the world are exposed to an increasing number of stresses and highly vulnerable to shocks. We focus on the impacts of one highly prevalent category of shocks: armed conflict. For the empirical analysis, we spatiotemporally match sex-disaggregated employment survey data with conflict event data from 29 African countries.