Conflict Trends (no. 33): Real-time analysis of African political violence, January 2015
Welcome to the January issue of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project’s (ACLED) Conflict Trends report. Each month, ACLED researchers gather, analyse and publish data on political violence in Africa in realtime. Weekly updates to realtime conflict event data are published through our research partners at Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) and also on the ACLED website.
This month, ACLED launched Version 5: a fully revised and updated conflict event dataset containing records of all political violence in Africa from 1997 through 2014 inclusive. This month’s report is an overview of conflict in 2014 and profiles on-going violence in Central African Republic, civilian-directed violence by political and communal militias in Democratic Republic of Congo, declining protest rates in Egypt, Al Shabaab activity in Kenya, Boko Haram violence in North-East Nigeria, escalating factional conflict in Libya, service delivery protests in South Africa, government and rebel clashes in South Sudan, geographicallyconcentrated violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and a special report on Remote Violence and Political Militias in 2014. Elsewhere on the continent, conflict levels dropped in Mali, Angola and Kenya throughout 2014 with persistent levels of violence experienced in Algeria, Somalia and Niger.
In 2014, ACLED recorded 15,513 violent conflict events on the African continent, an increase of 12.9% compared with 2013. As many as 20 African states witnessed an increase in violence over the previous year, highlighting that violent conflict is not limited to a few warring regions on the continent, but represents a far more widespread phenomenon
Click here to read the full report.
