Mapping urban and rural violence in North and West Africa

Abstract

Chapter 3 describes the methods used to analyse whether politically motivated violence is more pronounced in urban or rural areas, how the intensity of violence has shifted between cities and their hinterland over time, and how the use of violence varies geographically across North and West Africa. The spatial and temporal relationships between cities and violence are studied using population densities from WorldPop, a global gridded population dataset that has been used for longitudinal analysis since 2000. The report also classifies density data according to the recent “degree of urbanisation” definition adopted by the United Nations, which distinguishes between three categories of human settlements and facilitates cross-national comparisons. Population data are next combined with conflict data from the Armed Conflict and Location & Event Data (ACLED) project to classify violent events as urban, semi-urban or rural, and to calculate the distance from each violent event to the nearest urban area. The report also uses the Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) developed by the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC/OECD) to identify major clusters of violence in the region. The results of the indicator are complemented by a qualitative analysis of ten case studies that have experienced high levels of violence in the past decade, in order to identify the local roots of urban and rural conflicts.