Africa is no longer the “failed continent.” Like the rest of the world, it has become successively more peaceful over the last several decades. Over the longer term, this trend is likely to continue along with its booming economies and populations.

In many ways, Africa is the future—and increasingly relevant on the world stage.

But conflict persists. Piracy is a growing problem along the continent’s western coast. There’s the aftermath of revolutions in North Africa. Civil wars have erupted in the Central African Republic and the world’s newest nation of South Sudan. And an insurgency is raging in Nigeria that could get a lot worse.

From the Sahara to Somalia and down to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these are the civil wars, conflicts and threats that will shape this part of Africa’s narrative in 2014.

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Civil wars: South Sudan and the Central African Republic

Both South Sudan and the Central African Republic were thrown into full-scale civil wars in 2013. In both cases, the conflicts are fought with extraordinary brutality and display signs of ethnic and religious violence.

In South Sudan, Pres. Salva Kiir and his former deputy (now enemy) Riek Machar, seem at least prepared to talk to each other but they’re not doing much to stop the violence. The situation in the CAR has spun totally out of control, and both conflicts will continue to dominate the security agenda on the continent for months to come.

South Sudan could see a power-sharing agreement being reached relatively quickly, but like the peace agreement between South and North Sudan, any compromise will be very volatile and will need continuous support from important neighbors and the larger international community to succeed.

Even if a peace agreement is reached, low-intensity hostilities are likely to continue in parts of the country, as all parties will be eager to protect their respective spheres of influence.

In the Central African Republic, nobody is even talking about a serious peace agreement, mostly because the conflict parties are much less well defined. The bulk of the violence in the country is occurring between militias—part of the rebel coalition that brought the current government to power—on the one side, and local self-defense groups on the other. The central state has completely collapsed and is unlikely to recover any time soon.

The most realistic path to stability for the CAR will be the deployment of a substantial peacekeeping force comparable to that in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it is unclear if the international community is willing to shoulder the costs and risks of such a mission for a country that is comparatively unimportant.

Even if the current contingent of 1,600 French and 2,500 African troops is augmented, it will take months for these forces to deploy and have a discernible effect on the ground. As was the case with Syria, the media interest in the violence committed in the Central African Republic will likely fade as the year 2014 progresses, but the conflict will stay deadly and unresolved for some time to come.