Maps&Facts: Conflict in North and West Africa is centralised around a few powerful actors

In North and West Africa, many actors are involved in conflict, including state forces, rebel groups and extremist organisations. Their relationships are complex, volatile and poorly understood. Organisations can be allies one day, fight each other the next and co-operate later again. SWAC maps the relationships between over 3 800 actors from 1997–2023 using a relational approach called dynamic social network analysis. Relationships take the form of rivalries and alliances. Rivalries mean a conflictual relationship between two actors that results in a violent event; alliances mean co-operative relationships.

In the rivalry network shown, Nigerian civilians occupy the centre, as they are targeted by governmental forces, extremist violent organisations and other armed groups. In the first six months of 2023, 527 clashes between unidentified armed groups and civilians were recorded by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) in Nigeria, resulting in 554 deaths. In the Central Sahel, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslim or Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is the largest coalition of jihadist organisations in the region.

It also has the largest number of enemies. JNIM is fighting military forces in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, ethnic militias such as Dan Na Ambassagou, self-defence groups such as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), other jihadist groups such as the Islamic State Sahel Province (IS Sahel) and civilians.

The conflict network is centred around a few exceptionally violent actors, reflecting the fact that the region has become one large theatre of conflict in which violence is no longer isolated but part of a wider conflict environment.