On Forecasting Conflict in the Sudan: 2009–2012

Abstract This paper considers univariate and multivariate models to forecast monthly conflict events in the Sudan over the out‐of‐sample period 2009–2012. The models used to generate these forecasts were based on a specification from a machine learning algorithm fit to 2000–2008 monthly data. The model that includes previous month's wheat price performs better than a similar model which does not include past wheat prices (the univariate model). Both models did not perform well in forecasting conflict in a neighborhood of the 2012 ‘Heglig crisis’. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.