The State of Peace and Security in Africa (SPSA) has become the annual flagship Report of the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa, popularly called the Tana Forum, offering a synoptic analysis of the pressing peace and security issues on the continent during the previous year—2018, in this case— and provide explanations for them. It is not intended, and cannot even pretend, to document all the peace and security challenges the continent faced in any particular year, but draw attention to those considered to be the most salient and cross-cutting, particularly in terms of disruption and harm they caused African citizens and the states.
For this edition, two deliberate decisions were made. The first one is to give those accounts in two separate but complementary volumes; this present one, which is a general survey of key peace and security matters across Africa in 2018, and the changing internal and external factors that defined or undermine them, while the second volume focuses on the specific theme for the 8th Tana Forum- Political Dynamics in the Horn of Africa: Nurturing the Emerging Peace Trends. The two documents should, preferably, be read as companion volumes, although they also standalone enough to be read separately. The second decision, common to both volumes, is the equally deliberate effort to present, in equal measures, the unpalatable but also positive sides to the narrative on peace and security in Africa.