Labels that emphasise the social identities of the contending parties not only impede efforts to comprehend their causes but also obscure their vast dimensions.
A woman shelters in a church in the Central African Republic after deadly 2014 attacks involving Muslim and Christian fighters.
EPA/Tanya Bindra
The Virunga National Park is home to many people living off the land. Clashes between the army and those illegally extracting resources is causing huge problems for conservation.
Many pastoralists in central Kenya lost access to their ancestral pasture lands in the early 20th century.
Reuters/Siegfried Modola
The simplistic assumption that the violence in central Kenya is the result of drought mask the more complex underlying dynamics of politics, access to resources and land.
Armed men protecting their livestock from rivals in a dry northern Kenya region which borders South Sudan and Uganda.
Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
Ending a war is not enough. The challenge for post-conflict situations in Africa is to escape the inter-war lawlessness maintained and reproduced by groups that have access to arms.