Question

Emergency food aid serves as a lifeline for vulnerable populations, providing crucial support during times of crisis to alleviate hunger and malnutrition. However, there is a pressing concern about the unintended consequences of food aid, specifically its potential to be diverted and used to fuel insurgency and conflict. This has sparked significant debate among researchers, policymakers, and humanitarian organizations regarding the relationship between emergency food aid and civil conflict.

On one hand, proponents argue that food aid can contribute to conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts. By meeting the basic food needs of affected populations, it is believed that food aid can help reduce grievances and tensions, promote stability, and foster social cohesion. Moreover, food aid programs often incorporate elements of community engagement, livelihood support, and capacity building, which can contribute to long-term resilience and reduce the risk of conflicts.

On the other hand, skeptics highlight the potential negative effects of food aid on conflict. They argue that food aid may, unintendedly, fuel conflicts by creating competition, unequal distribution, and dependency among communities. In some cases, food aid has been reported to be diverted by armed groups, leading to the militarization of aid and the perpetuation of conflicts.

You are a consultant for the Global Peace Research Institute (GPRI), a think-tank focusing on economic and social issues in developing countries. The GPRI is interested in studying civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is one of the most conflict-affected regions in the world. SSA countries have received significant amounts of emergency food aid. As a consultant, your goal to is conduct an extensive exploratory data analysis (EDA) using data visualization to try to understand the overall background of civil conflict and food aid in the region.

You are given the dataset ANL501_FoodAid.xlsx containing two workbooks. The first workbook, named “data”, contains the dataset. The second workbook, named “Description”, contains the variable description and the data sources. The dataset contains data on civil conflict, natural disasters, aid (humanitarian aid, nonhumanitarian aid, and other aid), and other data on the SSA countries like inflation, GDP per capita, and a measure of the type of regime known as the Polity2 score. Aid, in this context, refers to the amount of aid received by an SSA country from 30 Development Assistant Committee (DAC) Donor Countries.