Conflicts in Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) together with natural disasters helped increase the number of people internally displaced in Africa in 2022 to levels higher than the previous year, according to a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Around 16.5 million internal displacements were recorded in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022, an increase of 17% compared to 2021.
Conflict and violence triggered nine million displacements and DRC accounted for almost half of the total.
The number is the "highest ever figure" in sub-Saharan Africa and accounted for more than 40% of the global total, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said in a report.
A prolonged drought in Somalia accounted for 1.1 million displacements, the "highest figure recorded globally since data on drought displacement became available in 2017", it said.
Nigeria recorded 2.4 million disaster displacements, its highest in a decade and the highest in the region last year.
The aftermath of severe floods in South Africa led to the country’s highest displacements since 2008.
The United Nations migration agency said this week that 700,000 people have already been internally displaced in a matter of weeks by the conflict in Sudan between the army and a rival paramilitary group.
There was a “perfect storm” of conflict and natural disasters in 2022, leading to “displacement on a scale never seen before,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
