Africa accounts for 40% of global conflicts: International Committee of the Red Cross

Africa accounts for roughly 40% of the world's armed conflicts, with some 50 ongoing clashes across the continent, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday.

"We now have more than 50 active armed conflict situations in Africa," the ICRC's Gilles Carbonnier said.

This represents a 45% increase since 2020, he said, and accounts for "approximately 40 percent of total conflicts in the world."

"The humanitarian consequences are truly dramatic, because we have some 35 million people displaced due to these conflicts in African countries, and this represents almost half of the displaced people in the world," Carbonnier said.

Decline in funding

It comes as the ICRC, like many other humanitarian organisations, faces a decline in funding due to massive aid cuts by the United States and other Western countries in 2025.

"This forces us to make very painful choices, where we must reduce, or even cease, some of our operations to prioritise others," Carbonnier said.