KHARTOUM , Jan 20, 2006 (AFP) - While accounting for only around a seventh of the world's population, Africa has far more than its share of war and mayhem, as the continent's leaders will be painfully aware when they hold their annual summit in Khartoum on January 23 and 24.

Indeed Sudan itself is home to at least two major conflicts, a fact which is proving a handicap for President Omar el-Beshir, who as leader of the host country should normally take over the presidency of the 53-nation African Union.

The following is a brief, and unfortunately non-exhaustive, list of conflicts in Africa :

- The Democratic Republic of the Congo : The vast DRC, previously known as Zaire and before that as the Belgian Congo , has suffered widespread horror on many occasions, including some of the worst excesses of 19th-century European colonialism.

Between 1998 and 2002 the mineral-rich country saw fighting that drew in several neighbouring nations, and is believed to have left some three million people dead, inspiring comparisons with the First World War. Violence continues in the east, which borders on the fractious Great Lakes region of Africa .

To the north of the DRC the separate and much smaller Republic of Congo has also seen endemic violence and instability, involving armed groups in the Pool region.

- Rwanda , Burundi and Uganda : The small " Great Lakes " countries have seen major ethnic and social conflict in the past decade. Although ethnic violence has subsided in Rwanda , which suffered genocidal killings in 1994, conflict continues in Burundi and the neighbouring regions of the DRC. Uganda still suffers from a bloody insurrection in its northern regions, bordering Sudan .

- Sudan : Some 21 years of fighting in the mainly Christian and animist south of Africa 's biggest state left an estimated 1.5 million people dead. A peace deal was signed in January 2005. Meanwhile endemic fighting in the western Darfur region has brought accusations of war crimes, with some US officials even speaking of genocide on the part of pro-government groups.

- The Horn of Africa: Somalia , where the United States mounted an ill-starred military operation under United Nations auspices in 1993, has become the textbook model for what is now called the "failed state." Fighting between rival warlords continues sporadically, and although a government has been appointed, it cannot yet set up shop in the capital.

Meanwhile tension has been rising again between Eritrea and Ethiopia , which fought a fratricidal border war between 1998 and 2000.

- Southern Africa: Angola , Mozambique , Namibia and South Africa , plus the smaller states of the region, have emerged from the major conflicts that characterized the last quarter of the 20th century, but a heritage of poverty and deprivation remains. Some separatist violence continues in the oil-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda .

- West Africa : Rich in resources including oil, iron, diamonds and cocoa, west Africa is home to multiple conflicts, and some countries have come close to being considered "failed states."

Oil-rich Nigeria is currently seeing major conflict in the Niger Delta region, where local groups have attacked oil platforms. Nigeria also has periodic upsurges of violence in its mainly Muslim north.

Ivory Coast , the world's number-one cocoa producer and formerly the region's richest state, has been plunged into episodic violence since an army rebellion in 2002.

Liberia and Sierra Leone have suffered years of brutal civil war, which has only subsided in the past two years. Some of that violence has spilled over into Guinea , and also parts of Ivory Coast .

Further to the west, Senegal has had years of low-intensity conflict involving separatists in its southern region of Casamance.

- North and north-central Africa: The arid landlocked state of Chad is experiencing a new upsurge in violence, notably along the border with the Sudanese region of Darfur .

Algeria is emerging from a decade of murderous strife which began when the military-backed government cancelled elections that were due to be won by a militant Islamic party. The situation also remains tense in the contested territory of Western Sahara , which was annexed by Morocco in 1975.