ICC Note:

For the second year in a row, Africa is seeing a decline in the number of terrorist related deaths. This is a good sign that countries are more effectively fighting extremism within their own borders. Terror groups like Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab are being driven back and are less active in many areas. This is not the end of the fight however. Many of these same countries that are fighting terrorism are the same countries that are listed as Countries of Particular Concern for their treatment of religious minorities. Also all of Africa remains at risk for terrorism as long as any extremist and terrorist groups are allowed to survive.

07/11/2017 Africa (VoiceofAmerica)-  In the past five years, terrorist attacks have killed nearly 20,000 people across Africa. Two groups, Boko Haram and al-Shabab, accounted for 71 percent of reported incidents and 91 percent of fatalities.

But, while these and other militant groups remain active, fatal terrorist attacks across the continent are on pace to fall for a second straight year, and the total number of attacks is running far below 2012 highs.

These findings are part of VOA’s original analysis of data from ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. ACLED tracks political violence, protests and terrorist events across Africa. Their reports include attacks since 1997 based on data collected from local news media, government statements, non-governmental organizations and published research.

Review of incidents

To conduct its review, VOA analyzed a portion of the full ACLED dataset by comparing the primary perpetrator of each attack to a list of 34 terrorist organizations. Those groups are named on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Terrorist Exclusion lists, or in a separate analysis conducted by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. All known aliases were included, accounting for more than 100 group names.

…