Abstract
Material deprivation and social intolerance are two of Africa’s pressing governance challenges, yet the relationship between them remains empirically underexplored at continental scale. This paper examines whether citizens experiencing lived poverty are more likely to hold intolerant attitudes toward people from other ethnic groups, religions, and national backgrounds, and identifies the mechanism through which this relationship operates. Using Afrobarometer Round 9 data from 39 African countries and a six-item social intolerance index, multilevel models show that lived poverty is positively associated with social intolerance. Mediation analysis indicates that this relationship more plausibly operates through political distrust than through perceived discrimination by government. As confidence in the state’s capacity to provide and mediate scarcity weakens, material hardship may be more readily interpreted through zero-sum competition, with outgroups seen as rivals for scarce goods. The poverty-intolerance relationship is also stronger among respondents who identify more strongly with their ethnic group than with the nation. More educated, urban, older, and male citizens express lower intolerance. The findings suggest that strengthening government capacity, responsiveness, and effectiveness may be as important for sustaining social cohesion in Africa as direct poverty-reduction efforts.
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