Understanding the causes of intrastate armed conflict and civil wars – whether as individual cases or in a more general sense – is the most compelling but perhaps also the most elusive challenge in the study of such conflicts. In this field, causal relationships are complex and difficult to establish beyond doubt, and discrete direct causes rarely exist. This chapter explores the methodological challenges that arise when seeking to identify direct or indirect causes of civil wars, in particular across multiple cases. It presents key theories of civil war onset in relation to political, economic, social, institutional, ecological, identity, and governance conditions. It gives particular attention to “greed” and “grievance” as key concepts for understanding why intrastate armed conflicts occur, the association between democratization and increased risk of violent conflict, and the concept of “ethnic conflict” as a cause of civil war. The question of whether it is more helpful to focus on enabling factors – the conditions that allow violent uprisings to occur – or motivations for participating in armed conflict to understand the causes of civil war is also discussed. The chapter concludes by considering the implications these debates raise for policies designed to prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace.

There are several large-scale violent conflicts in Africa, which affect some but by no means all African countries. The vast majority of these conflicts are intra-state conflicts; inter-state conflicts rarely occur. This chapter explains why this is the case after having explored the only two large-scale inter-state wars in Africa since decolonization: the war between Uganda and Tanzania as well as the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Turning to intra-state conflicts, several reasons for the outbreak of wars – often described as “new wars” – are explained as are the reasons that motivate some to become rebels. The greed vs. grievance argument plays an important role here. Thereafter, the two post-colonial genocides – in Rwanda and Darfur – are scrutinized alongside a discussion of why genocide occur. Being of unprecedented magnitude, “Africa’s Great War”, a war complex in the Great Lakes Region (1996-2006), is also analyzed as is the situation of and in refugee camps that are often a place of insecurity themselves.