In late July last year, the de facto Sudanese leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan surveyed freshly minted cadets to the tune of a martial drumbeat. In less than a minute, though, the parade devolved into chaos: two explosive-laden drones emerged over the hills, targeting al-Burhan. Cell phone footage shows crowds scattering as faint concussions shook the ground.
General al-Burhan survived this apparent assassination attempt. Others across the African continent, though, have been less fortunate. Last year, almost 1200 people across the continent were killed in hundreds of separate drone attacks — part of a worrying trend that threatens to further destabilize the region.
The first African drone strike was in 2011, when an American UAV struck a convoy of al-Shabaab militants in Somalia. That attack was representative of the old drone warfare: a multi-million dollar aircraft system operated from afar by a sophisticated power. Today, though, drone warfare has become far more accessible and widespread, including to non-state actors like the Rapid Support Forces, the rebel group that targeted al-Burhan. As the war in Ukraine — where as many as 80% of casualties are inflicted by drones — has proven, UAVs are fast becoming the cheapest and deadliest way to wage war. Now, the conflicts in Congo and Sudan, among others, are increasingly drone wars.
African countries have taken advantage of several emerging trends in drone warfare to expand their arsenals. Fast-shrinking hardware costs are chief among them. Crafty Ukrainian technicians have demonstrated that consumer electronics components like hobby motors and radio controllers can be rapidly assembled — often with the help of 3D printers and other affordable manufacturing gadgetry — for as little as a few hundred dollars. The munitions abundant in war-torn parts of Africa allow such drones to be armed simply by zip-tying a bomb to a frame.
New suppliers have also entered the global arms market, lowering prices and allowing buyers to sidestep the human-rights scrutiny that they would face in dealing with the U.S. and Europe. A dataset shows that Turkey, China, and Israel have become the top sources of drones to Africa, with Iran and the UAE in 5th and 6th place. One especially popular model is the Turkish Bayraktar TB2, a drone (alongside combat experience in Armenia and Algeria) that proved so effective at the beginning of the war in Ukraine that it inspired a song and music video. Whereas the TB2 is estimated to cost $5m, comparable American weaponry runs around $30m — far less attractive to cash-strapped African nations.
Drone warfare might seem to benefit African nations, for it offers a cheap way to project force without putting troops at risk. Indeed, central governments in Mali, Sudan, and Ethiopia have all successfully beaten back insurgent assaults using drones. As the attack on al-Burhan demonstrates, though, the very insurgent and rebel groups that African governments have sought to target with drones are also hitting back with them. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group is battling the government for control of the mineral-rich North Kivu province: M23 has deployed drones and jammers against UN peacekeepers. In Mali, Ukrainian-style quadcopter drones were used by Tuareg fighters to destroy a convoy of Russian mercenaries aligned with the government. Drones may be all the rage among African governments — but soon, they may be asking the likes of Turkey for drone defenses instead.
