Abstract

Africa is in deep and persistent conflict. Conflict is a complex phenomenon, perhaps more so on the continent of Africa. The number of conflicts within states has declined over time, yet most conflicts within states are found in Africa (Cederman and ETH Zürich, 2019). Cederman and ETH Zürich (2019) stated that recent trends indicate an increase in armed violence from around 2010. Unlike other regions, Africa demonstrates a high level of so-called non-state conflict, a conflict between various armed groups and factions fighting one another, not only the ruling government (Pettersson and Eck, 2018). These conflicts are mostly due to weak or absent leadership and weak governance in Africa. The conventional approach in measuring the burden of armed conflict is the number of fatalities per country per calendar year (Cilliers, 2014). This approach was adopted by UCDP (an initiative of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden) but was criticised for not considering that countries have different population sizes. Many contributing factors exacerbate conflict in Africa, such as poverty, corruption, poor governance, and leadership failures, among others.