State Fragility and Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa (Routledge Contemporary Africa)

This book focuses on the indicators of fragility and the resilience of state-led interventions to address them in sub-Saharan Africa. It analyzes the ‘figure’ of fragile states as the unit the analysis and situates the study of fragility, governance and political adaptation within contemporary global and local political, economic and socio-cultural contexts.

The chapters offer an indispensable, econometrically informed guide to better understanding issues that have an impact on fragility in governance and nation-building and affect policy-making and program design targeting institutions in various circumstances. These issues, as they relate to the indicators of fragility, are the contexts and correlates of armed conflicts on statehood and state fragility, the poverty-trap, pandemics and household food insecurity, and child labor. Case studies from across 46 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are assessed to offer clear, broad and multidisciplinary views of what the future holds for them and the international donor communities at large. Regarding state-led interventions, the authors utilize insightful statistical methods and epistemologies to explain the correlates of behavioral language frames and conflict de-escalation on battle-related deaths across the conflict zones within the sub-region, the regional and country-level interventions to end child labor, the institutional frameworks and interventions in the advancement of food security and health.

This book will be of interest to scholars of economics, development, politics in developing countries, Area and African Studies, peace, conflict and security studies.

John Idriss Lahai is a Research Fellow at the University of New England, Australia.

Isaac Koomson is a PhD candidate at the UNE Business School at the University of New England, Australia.