Armed Conflict
CCAPS researchers at the University of Sussex and Trinity College Dublin developed the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) that tracks the actions of opposition groups, governments, and militias across Africa, specifying the exact location and date of battle events, transfers of military control, headquarter establishment, civilian violence, and rioting.
ACLED includes data from 1999 to 2016, with real-time conflict data updated monthly for all of Africa and weekly for 30 high-risk states. Data are disaggregated by type of violence"including battles between armed actors, violence against civilians, and rioting"and a wide variety of actors"including government forces, rebel groups, militias, and civilians. All data are date-specific and geo-referenced to the town level. ACLED's disaggregation of civil war and transnational violent events allows analysis of the local factors that drive instability in Africa.
ACLED provides the tools for analysts to explore which regimes are most dangerous in Africa, who are the most active conflict groups on the continent, where are civilians most at risk, what types of violence are most prevalent, and where violent social upheaval, such as rioting, is on the increase.
Despite the waning of civil wars across the developing world, ACLED shows that political violence rates have remained stable in the past fifteen years. An increase in political violence across Africa from 2007 has offset a sharp decrease from 2002 to 2006. From 1997-2016, riots, protests and violence against civilians have increased, while the frequency of violent battles has decreased.
ACLED collects real-time data on conflicts continent-wide. ACLED also produces monthly conflict trend reports, which highlight escalating and ongoing conflicts while exploring violent group formation and patterns of violence within conflict-affected states.
ACLED data through 2016 bring the total number of ACLED events across all states to over 100,000, making ACLED the most comprehensive dataset on conflict locations and events publicly available. All ACLED historical and real-time data can be downloaded on this site in excel or www.acleddata.com by country in excel and GIS formats.
While the information is designed for disaggregated conflict analysis and crisis mapping, these data can be used in any mapping program or statistical package.
ACLED TEAM
ACLED is associated with the International Peace Research Institute and has received funding from the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Defense through the CCAPS program, and the European Research Council.
ACLED is directed by Prof. Clionadh Raleigh (University of Sussex). It is operated by senior research managers Andrew Linke (University of Colorado) and Caitriona Dowd (Trinity College Dublin). Senior research analysts Annie Ngwira, Charles Vannice, and Olivia Russell oversee regional coding.