Security Failures and the <scp>SDGs</scp> : Evidence From Intentional Homicide in Africa

ABSTRACT Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa has proven difficult despite sustained policy attention and international support. While existing research emphasizes economic and institutional drivers of development, the role of security failures has received comparatively limited systematic analysis. This study examines whether intentional homicide, as a measurable indicator of violent insecurity, constrains SDG performance in Africa and how this relationship is shaped by institutional capacity. Using a panel of African countries and employing country and year fixed‐effects estimation, interaction models, and dependence‐robust techniques, the analysis provides several novel insights. First, higher homicide rates are consistently associated with significantly lower SDG performance, even after controlling for macroeconomic fundamentals. Second, institutional quality—capturing government effectiveness, rule of law, regulatory quality, corruption control, and political stability—substantially improves SDG outcomes and attenuates the adverse development impact of homicide, though it does not fully eliminate it. Third, marginal‐effects analysis reveals strong heterogeneity: the SDG penalty of homicide is largest in weak institutional environments and declines steadily as institutional capacity improves. Robustness checks using Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and Common Correlated Effects estimators confirm that the results are not driven by cross‐sectional dependence or unobserved common shocks. Overall, the findings demonstrate that violent insecurity constitutes a binding constraint on sustainable development in Africa and that institutions play a critical buffering role. The study underscores the foundational importance of SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and argues that effective SDG strategies in Africa must integrate violence reduction with institutional strengthening to achieve durable development progress.