Intercommunal violence between non-state actors such as farmers and herders are on the rise within various African countries. Pressures on land and land-related resources due to privatization, urbanization, agropastoral expansion, mining activities, climate change, agricultural intensification and misguided land tenure policies are believed to fuel agropastoral violence. This paper investigates the extent to which large-scale land acquisitions exacerbate conflicts involving pastoralists in Western, Central and Eastern Africa. We maintain that the so-called land rush increases the risk of conflicts between pastoralists groups and with their neighboring farming communities by sharpening land scarcity, disrupting traditional grazing routes, lowering social capital and affecting traditional dispute settlement mechanisms. Relying on geocoded information on land deals as well as different data on intercommunal violence for the period 2007-2019, we will apply advanced spatio-temporal modelling to test whether large-scale land acquisitions indeed intensify agropastoral clashes as assumed. In addition, we will assess whether land deals targeting common land and taking place in agropastoral frontiers are particularly likely to spur livelihood conflicts. Our paper makes two important contributions to an emerging literature: it is the first systematic attempt to quantitatively test the impact of large-scale land conversions on violence involving pastoralists
and farming societies. In addition, it explores particular conditions under which this type of intercommunal violence becomes more likely.