Armed Confl ict and Demographic Outcomes in Mozambique and Rwanda: What Can Censuses Tell Us?

Confl ict and civil war are part of African history. First there was the resistance to colonization and the armed struggles that led to the independence of many African countries in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Second, after gaining independence, many African countries have been involved in civil wars, mainly rooted in ideological and political contradictions and ethnoregional frictions. Recent data show that Africa is still home to some of the most violent confl icts in the world, with at least one-third of the 131 active armed confl icts recorded by the Uppsala Confl ict Data Program from 1989 to 2009 (Harbom and Wallensteen 2010).