Growing Cities in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Land Competing Interests in Peri‐Urban Areas and Organised Violence

Competing interests over land are sharply rising worldwide; they are pushed by several factors, including peri‐urban dynamics and growing commercialisation of land. Through a quasi‐experimental design based on spatially disaggregated data, the analysis explores the effect of peri‐urbanisation processes and large‐scale land acquisitions on the risk of organised violence. The results, confirmed throughout several model specifications and robustness checks, provide evidence that peri‐urbanisation processes are strongly associated with a higher risk of experiencing events of organised violence. The likelihood of being the arena of such events is even higher when large acquisitions are concluded within peri‐urban areas. Urbanisation processes and large land acquisitions should therefore be framed within a comprehensive strategy grounded on inclusive urban planning and land access safeguards, in order to minimise the risk that land access insecurity may be translated into violence.