BackgroundAfrican swine fever (ASF) causes severe socio-economic impacts due to high mortality and trade restrictions. Many risk factors of ASF have been identified at farm level. However, understanding the risk factors, especially wild suid hosts, determining ASF transmission at regional level remains limited.MethodsBased on ASF outbreak data in domestic pigs during 2006–2014, we here tested, separately for West and East Africa, which risk factors were linked to ASF presence at a regional level, using generalized linear mixed models.ResultsOur results show that ASF infections in the preceding year was an important predictor for ASF presence in both West and East Africa. Both pig density and human density were positively associated with ASF presence in West Africa. In East Africa, ASF outbreaks in domestic pigs were also correlated with higher percentages of areas occupied by giant forest hogs and by high-tick-risk areas.ConclusionsOur results suggest that regional ASF risk in East Africa and in West Africa were associated with different sets of risk factors. Regional ASF risk in West Africa mainly followed the domestic cycle, whereas the sylvatic cycle may influence regional ASF risk in East Africa. With these findings, we contribute to the better understanding of the risk factors of ASF occurrence at regional scales that may aid the implementation of effective control measures.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1953-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.