Welcome to the February 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 on the ACLED website.
Last month, ACLED launched Version 7: a fully revised and updated conflict and protest event dataset containing records of all political violence and protest in Africa from 1997 through 2016 inclusive. Several supplements to previous years' data have been made, including Somalia 2005 -08, North Africa December 2010-December 2011 excl. Libya, and Sudan 1997-2003. Targeted reviews were conducted for LRA activity in Sudan, Central African Republic and DR-Congo and the protests in Oromia region of Ethiopia in 2014-2015 along with more specific events across the continent. This month’s report is an overview of conflict in 2016 and profiles trends in violence in six key focus countries: Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Somalia and Tunisia (see pages 7-8). In-depth reports outline how reduction in riot and protest activity in Ethiopia have been replaced by sustained battles between state forces and OLF and ONLA rebel groups; decreasing Boko Haram activity and sustained violence by Fulani herders in central Nigeria, and several conflict scenarios for the coming months in violence between rival military factions and non-state groups in Libya.