Across West Africa, governments and citizens are grappling with how to respond to violent extremism and militant recruitment. Security operations remain important, especially where communities face immediate threats. Yet security measures alone do not address all the conditions that allow violence to spread.
One of the clearest lessons from emerging research is that economic exclusion, especially among young people, can quietly weaken the foundations of peace long before a crisis becomes visible. When large numbers of youth are unable to find stable work, meaningful opportunity, or a believable path to adulthood, armed groups may find it easier to recruit, persuade, and retain followers.
That is the central message of my recent study on West Africa. Using data from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal between 2000 and 2024. The study examines whether youth unemployment contributes to militant activity. Rather than relying only on simple association, it uses an approach designed to identify causal impact more credibly by tracing how changes in global commodity prices shape labour market conditions in economies that depend heavily on exports such as oil, cocoa, gold, uranium, and cotton.
The core finding is striking: a one-percentage-point increase in youth unemployment is associated with around four additional militant events in a country in a given year. This suggests that youth unemployment should not be treated only as a development problem. It should also be understood as a peacebuilding and conflict-prevention issue.
Why this matters for peacebuilding
This finding matters because it shifts the policy conversation. Too often, employment is treated as a long-term social objective to be pursued after violence has been contained. The evidence points in the opposite direction. Jobs, livelihoods, and economic inclusion can be part of prevention itself. In fragile or conflict-affected settings, the absence of work is not simply the absence of income. It can also mean loss of dignity, blocked aspirations, weakened trust in public institutions, and greater vulnerability to actors who offer money, belonging, identity, or protection.
For ordinary families and communities, this dynamic is not abstract. A young person who cannot find decent work may remain dependent for years, delay key life transitions, and feel increasingly disconnected from society. In places where state presence is weak and local economies are under pressure, armed groups can exploit those frustrations. They do not recruit only with ideology; they also recruit through opportunity, status, and survival. That is why youth employment deserves greater attention within peacebuilding practice.
Three peacebuilding lessons from the study
The first lesson is that unemployment can lower the barrier to recruitment. When legitimate income is scarce, the opportunity cost of joining an armed group falls. Militant organizations may then appear more attractive, especially where they can offer cash, food, mobility, or a sense of purpose. Peacebuilding actors, therefore, need to view apprenticeships, technical training, local enterprise support, and labour-intensive community projects not as peripheral economic programmes but as practical tools of prevention. These interventions can help narrow the space in which armed groups operate. At the same time, their success depends on credibility, continuity, and local trust. Short-lived projects with weak follow-up may raise expectations without changing outcomes.
The second lesson is that joblessness can deepen grievance, while economic inclusion can help rebuild trust. Prolonged unemployment can fuel frustration, exclusion, and resentment, particularly among young people who believe that public institutions have little to offer them. In that context, militant narratives can gain traction by turning private disappointment into political anger. Well-designed employment initiatives can do more than generate income. They can restore dignity, strengthen belonging, and reconnect excluded youth to local institutions and community networks. But peacebuilding practice must remain realistic: jobs alone will not resolve all drivers of violence. Marginalization, governance failures, corruption, and unresolved local grievances also matter.
The third lesson is that resilience matters because economic shocks are unavoidable. Many West African economies remain heavily exposed to fluctuations in global commodity markets. When prices fall, employment conditions can deteriorate quickly, especially for youth already at the edge of the labour market. The study shows that these shocks can have security consequences, due to a rise in theft, survival crime, and the increased willingness of desperate youth to accept militant payments for intelligence or logistics. This gives governments and donors a practical agenda: diversify local economies, support sectors less vulnerable to price swings, and build rapid-response employment measures that can cushion downturns before insecurity worsens. Temporary public works, emergency livelihood support, and small-business recovery programmes may not solve structural unemployment, but they can reduce immediate pressures that armed groups exploit.
What a stronger response could look like
A more serious peacebuilding response would place youth employment alongside security, governance, and reconciliation rather than beneath them.
First, governments should invest more consistently in local job pathways that are visible and accessible to vulnerable youth, especially outside capital cities. Skills programs work best when linked to real market demand, local value chains, and practical financing opportunities.
Second, peacebuilding organizations should combine livelihood programs with civic participation, mentoring, psychosocial support, and trust-building so that economic inclusion is connected to social inclusion.
Third, policymakers should pay closer attention to how global shocks filter into local instability. Conflict prevention should include plans for labour-market stress, not only plans for military escalation.
This approach also requires humility. Not every unemployed young person is at risk of joining an armed group, and militancy cannot be reduced to economics alone. Communities experience insecurity differently, and the causes of violence are layered. Even so, the evidence suggests that unemployment is one pressure point that policy can address more directly than many others. Ignoring it leaves peacebuilding strategies incomplete. Taking it seriously opens a pathway toward prevention that is more grounded in everyday realities.
The bottom line
West Africa is unlikely to build lasting peace by focusing only on armed groups after they have already gained strength. It must also reduce the conditions that make recruitment easier in the first place. Youth unemployment is one of those conditions. Addressing it will not remove every source of conflict, but it can lower one of the pressures that helps violence grow. In that sense, creating economic opportunity for young people is not simply a development target. It is part of the long-term work of building peace, strengthening social trust, and giving communities a more credible alternative to violence.
Keywords: Joblessness, youth employment, West Africa, peace, conflict, conflict resolution, militant, recruitment
Abubakari Najimu
Abubakari Najimu is a PhD student in Public Law at the University of Venda, South Africa, with interdisciplinary academic training in law, management, human resource strategy, business planning, and development studies. He holds an MSc in Management and Human Resource Strategy from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, as well as postgraduate and undergraduate degrees from the University for Development Studies, Ghana, and a Master's in Labour Law and Practice from the University of Ghana, Ghana. He has also developed a strong research interest in employment and labour law, with particular attention to workplace justice, labour rights, public regulation, and institutional accountability. Beyond his academic work, he has extensive professional experience in university governance and administration at Tamale Technical University, where he has served in several roles supporting academic planning, accreditation, quality assurance, and faculty administration.
