Characteristics of modern conflicts in Africa

Chapter 2 reviews the literature on armed conflicts in Africa, with a particular focus on their spatial dimension. The first section shows that no single cause can explain the increase in armed conflicts observed in Africa since the end of the Cold War. The governance of postcolonial elites, natural resources, sovereignty, ethnicity and religion are ingredients that combine in different ways and to varying degrees in each conflict rather than operating as universally deterministic causes. The second section shows that geography is a fundamental dimension of conflicts. Conflicts can be facilitated or constrained by geographical features such as mountains, borders, and distance to capital cities. Geography can also be a cause of conflicts when state and non-state actors fight for control over territory. Finally, conflicts can spread geographically, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The third section investigates how key geographical concepts such as distance, identity, borders, territory and scale affect the spatiality of modern conflicts.