Why Poverty Is a Threat to Peace

By Divine Adongo | Voices of Africa

In a small village in northern Burkina Faso, a young man named Idrissa once farmed millet with his father, attended Quranic school, and played football with his friends after sunset. But when droughts came and the crops failed, when his school shut down due to a lack of teachers, and when no job offered him purpose or pay, Idrissa made a different choice. A man in dusty boots and a motorcycle promised him $50 a month, a sense of identity, and the illusion of justice. So Idrissa picked up a gun, not because he wanted to kill — but because, in his words, “it was the only thing hiring.”

This is the story of many young Africans — not just those in Sahelian conflict zones, but across the continent where poverty, hopelessness, and exclusion act as silent recruiters for instability. The global narrative often paints Africa’s conflicts as driven by ethnic divisions or religious extremism. But scratch beneath the surface and the root causes tell a different story — one where unemployment, land deprivation, lack of education, and systemic injustice create fertile ground for violence.

Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of dignity, jobs, justice, and opportunity. In too many parts of Africa, peace is brittle because people have little to protect. A young person with no education, no land, no healthcare, and no hope has little to lose. It is not ideology but inequality that pushes many into the arms of armed groups. As long as we ignore this link, peacekeeping missions will keep failing, and national security strategies will keep treating symptoms while ignoring the disease.

This is the core of the security-development nexus — the idea that you cannot separate safety from socioeconomic well-being. Secure societies are those where citizens can feed their families, send their children to school, and dream of a better future. Conversely, poverty fuels conflict by fostering grievances, eroding trust in institutions, and making people vulnerable to recruitment, radicalisation, and crime.

This is not a new idea. The African Union’s Agenda 2063, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and regional security frameworks all acknowledge this truth. Yet, in practice, Africa still invests more in weapons than in schools, and more in fences than in farms. Development budgets are slashed while defense budgets balloon. Politicians build prisons faster than they build clinics. And when violence erupts, they respond with force instead of food, forgetting that an empty stomach is more dangerous than an angry slogan.

Yet hope is not lost. Across Africa, there are emerging examples of what peace through development can look like. In Rwanda, investment in rural cooperatives has created jobs and reduced tensions among post-genocide communities. In Ghana’s northern regions, youth training programmes in agribusiness have provided alternatives to migration or militancy. In Somaliland, community-based development planning has helped prevent clan conflicts. These initiatives are not perfect, but they prove that when people have something to live for, they are less likely to fight.

Building peace through development means reimagining national budgets, foreign aid, and local priorities. It means funding vocational training as a peace strategy. It means integrating conflict sensitivity into economic policy. It means putting youth employment at the heart of security discourse. It also means involving communities in their development, not imposing policies from the top, but co-creating solutions from below.

For Pan-Africanists, this is a moral and strategic imperative. Africa’s conflicts are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a deeper structural failure — a betrayal of the social contract between governments and their people. True peace will not come from UN resolutions or elite summits alone. It will come from ensuring that no African child is forced to choose between hunger and violence. It will come when our economies are inclusive, our institutions are accountable, and our young people are empowered.

Idrissa’s story is not inevitable. It is a warning — and a wake-up call. If Africa wants peace, it must invest in people. Guns may silence dissent, but only dignity can silence despair.