Forecasting Armed Conflict in the Sahel: Forecasts for November 2021–October 2024

Preventing armed conflict is key to promoting development and well-being in the Sahel. To strengthen its work to promote peace globally, the United Nations have recently stressed the importance of early action and early warning about impending conflict. This report presents the ViEWS system, a systematic, data-driven conflict early-warning system developed for Africa and the Middle East. Designed to complement expert assessments drawing on qualitative methods, the system produces estimates of the probability that armed conflict events will occur in countries and sub-national locations during each of the next 1–36 months. The report outlines the main features of the system, discusses the uncertainties involved and how well the system handles these, and presents the latest forecasts for the UNISS countries of the Sahel. The ViEWS forecasts are updated on a monthly basis and made available in full through an API, and in summarised form on the ViEWS website. The report also outlines some possible future developments and improvements of the system.