Zoonotic Disease and Conflict Risk in Africa 1997-2019

Geolocated monthly data on 22 zoonotic diseases in Africa from January 1997 to December 2019. It was created to analyze the relationship between disease outbreaks and civil conflict, with results indicating disease constrained state military activity but increased social conflict risk involving non-state actors.

Use Cases

• Analyze the temporal correlation between zoonotic disease outbreak events and monthly social conflict incidents.
• Map the geolocated spread of 22 specific zoonotic diseases across Africa over a 23-year period.
• Model the causal effect of disease outbreaks on state military activity versus non-state actor violence.
• Investigate the role of local civil defense mobilization as a mechanism linking disease outbreaks to increased conflict risk.

Strengths

• Covers a 23-year time range from 1997 to 2019.
• Includes data on 22 distinct zoonotic diseases.
• Geolocated and monthly temporal resolution for spatial and time-series analysis.
• Designed for causal inference, with robustness checks for endogeneity noted in the source study.

Limitations

• The specific number of rows, columns, and file size are unknown.
• Data granularity (e.g., country, region, or point-level) is not specified beyond 'geolocated'.
• Relies on the source study's methodology for disease and conflict event identification, which may have inherent measurement biases.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse, authored by Ore Koren.

Collection Method

A new geolocated monthly dataset compiled for the associated study.

Time Range

January 1997 – December 2019.

Freshness

Last updated in February 2026, though the core data covers through 2019.

Geography

Africa.