Mapping Africa Transformations
Security
Despite rapid urbanisation, violence remains predominantly rural in West Africa. More than 40% of all events and fatalities recorded between 2000-22 occurred in rural areas, located in the outskirts of intermediary cities. These dashboards help to identify the changes in the intensity of the violence within regions and countries as well as changes in the violence stemming from the largest conflicting actors: Boko Haram, Jama'at Nasr al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), Wagner Group, and Zamfara Militia.
Because standard time-series analyses appear ill-suited to understanding the temporal patterns of terrorist attacks due to the sparsity of the events, the information presented below uses a novel technique for analysing low-frequency temporal events with the method proposed in Prieto-Curiel R, Walther O, Davies E (2023) Detecting trends and shocks in terrorist activities. PLoS ONE 18(9): e0291514. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291514.