Academic freedom and peace: Comparative insights from Africa

Building on earlier literature on the role of academic freedom in shaping public attitudes and policies, this study examines its impact on peace. Using the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index and the Varieties of Democracy Index on Academic Freedom, along with Generalised and Ordinary Least Squares econometric techniques, we find that the preceding level of academic freedom is associated with peace and the absence of violence in a sample covering 162 countries during the period 2012–2022. This result remains robust when tested in 50 African countries where intra-state conflicts have been frequent, including a sample of 25 countries with multiparty political competition and high levels of factionalism, which heightens the risk of conflict, as measured by the Factionalized Elites indicator in the Fragile States ranking of the Fund for Peace. The results are robust, when excluding oil-exporter countries and testing different lag-structures for academic freedom. A qualitative analysis of Cameroon, Kenya, Tunisia and Zimbabwe highlights how differences in the space available for scholars influence their contributions to fostering peace. Politicised ethnicity threatens academic freedom within universities, highlighting its importance not just in university-government relations but also in local and regional politics.