This month’s Conflict Trends report is the fifth in a series of publications by the Armed Conflict Location &Event Dataset which report and analyse realtime conflict data from across the African continent.

This issue will focus on developments in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. Realtime data for the month of July is presented for each of these countries, and compared with historical trends to identify profiles and patterns in the geography, agents and modalities of violence in each case.

As in previous months, Somalia witnessed the highest number of violent events in July, followed by the DR-Congo and Sudan. Nigeria once again experienced extremely high fatality levels, while a spike in violence in Ethiopia drew attention to ethnic and religious cleavages within the country. Conflict levels in Mali have remained relatively stable since April, although pressure continued to mount over the course of the month for regional intervention in its troubled north.

Southern Africa continued to be affected by strikes and protests in Swaziland and South Africa, while conflict events have dropped in Libya and Tunisia over the past few weeks.