Road Investment and Violence in DRC: Perishable Peace Dividends

• Authors: Mathilde Lebrand, Hannes Mueller, Peer Schouten and Jevgenijs Steinbuks
• Keywords: violence, remote sensing, DRC, mining, road infrastructure
• JEL codes: O18, O19, O55, Q34

This paper explores the effect of road rehabilitation on violent conflict using a novel, rich dataset of road rehabilitation projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country received massive external investments in transport infrastructure rehabilitation under conditions of endemic conflict, often with the explicit objective of supporting peacebuilding objectives. The paper finds that investments in road rehabilitation deter violence, which decreases significantly by around 5 to 10 percentage points after the completion of road rehabilitation. However, another significant finding, based on large-scale machine learning analysis of remote sensing data of road quality over time, is that the peace dividend of infrastructure investments is perish- able: violence increases again as roads progressively deteriorate. Improved durability and systematic maintenance of roads are thus necessary to extend the “peace dividend” of road investments.