Supply Chain Disruption and Resilience in Conflict Zones

In this review, 58 empirical studies concerning supply chain disruption and resilience in war regions found in Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia were synthesized. This analysis shows that armed conflict causes widespread destruction of infrastructure, obstruction of key transport routes, and the imposition of sanction regimes, and as such, creates ripple effects of adverse effects on food, energy, and other critical supply chains of goods. Diversification of sourcing plans, alternative routing, setting up of inventory buffers and integrative activities by several stakeholders are all aimed at increasing resilience. Further, the use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, geographic information systems, blockchain, and cloud-based monitoring has an immense level of visibility and responsiveness to supply chains, yet the solutions are limited in their capacity to invest and the infrastructure to deploy such solutions is also limiting.