This State of Peace and Security in Africa (SPSA) Report is a background paper for the 2018 Tana
Forum on the theme: Ownership of Africa’s Peace and Security Provision: Financing and Reforming
the African Union. As in previous years, this report provides contextual information that should,
hopefully, inform the nature, quality and direction of debate on peace and security issues on the
continent. This report provides a succinct overview and analysis of the most salient conflict trends and offers a nuanced understanding of the efforts and responses mobilized to manage complex peace and security challenges on the continent. It also documents and presents the broad and thematic overview of peace and security in Africa in 2017. It covers the number and scale of armed conflict and violence, their spatial distribution (by country and region), the scale of threats to civilians and the overall fatalities recorded. It also highlights key thematic issues, namely low intensity conflicts, Africa centred solutions and peace processes, migration and security, violent extremism, mass protests and riots, and political transitions and security. Finally, it provides a critical reflection of crosscutting structural issues that underpin the trends in peace and security for 2017.
