Africa’s militaries have spent decades buying weapons from foreign suppliers that break down, sit idle for lack of spare parts, and require expertise local forces were never trained to sustain. A new analysis from researchers at the National Defense University finds that frustration with this dependency is now driving a continent-wide push toward homegrown defence manufacturing, with Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya and Sudan leading efforts to build, co-produce and export military technology rather than simply import it.
- China, Russia, the United States, Turkey and France currently dominate Africa’s weapons market, supplying everything from small arms to attack helicopters and unmanned systems. The results have consistently underdelivered: from the Sahel to Somalia, imported equipment breaks down quickly, sits idle, or requires expertise local forces cannot sustain, while insurgents on motorbikes with improvised explosives routinely gain the upper hand
- South Africa illustrates the problem at its sharpest. The country operates one of the continent’s most advanced fighter fleets, yet only half of its Swedish-built JAS Gripen aircraft and just 7 of its 39 Oryx helicopters were serviceable as of mid-2024 due to parts shortages and maintenance gaps. State arms manufacturer Denel, once world-class, has collapsed over the past decade through financial distress, governance failures and state capture, losing suppliers, staff and operational credibility
- Ghana faces a different version of the same constraint. Its navy has one of the region’s more capable fleets but many ships remain unserviceable. Plans to expand were shelved because a single modern corvette costs $200 million, equal to half of Ghana’s entire 2024 military budget
- Morocco has moved furthest toward self-sufficiency and is now an emerging export player, having tripled its arms exports in recent years. It is partnering India’s Tata Motors to locally manufacture armoured vehicles, working with Israel’s Bluebird Aero Systems on military drone production, and actively courting US firms including Lockheed Martin to establish local production and maintenance lines
- Nigeria convened 37 African defence chiefs in August 2025 to coordinate thinking on local security solutions, the clearest signal yet that the continent’s largest military is treating defence localisation as a collective strategic project rather than a national procurement decision. Kenya is also building local capabilities through a combination of technology partnerships and domestic manufacturing programmes
- Sudan’s locally produced Zajil-3 multi-role attack drone, reverse-engineered from Iran’s Ababil-3, demonstrates that even conflict-affected states are pursuing indigenous production when foreign supply chains become unreliable or politically constrained
- Researchers Nate Allen and Joel Amegboh of the National Defense University argue the underlying driver is geopolitical: in an era of intensifying great-power competition and shifting alliances, the ability to make independent security decisions free from external influence has become a core national interest, not just a procurement preference
The shift reflects a structural logic that goes beyond military capability. Every dollar spent on foreign weapons that breaks down is a dollar that did not build local engineering capacity, supply chains, or maintenance infrastructure. Morocco’s success shows what is possible when a government commits to local production with enough consistency to attract foreign co-production partners: it becomes a regional hub rather than a regional customer. The challenge for most African militaries is the transition period, when local capacity is being built but is not yet reliable enough to replace imported systems entirely. Technology transfer and co-production agreements with firms like Tata and Bluebird are the bridge. They transfer skills and manufacturing knowledge rather than finished hardware, creating the industrial base from which genuine local production eventually becomes viable.
The Bigger Picture: Africa’s defence dependency is not just a military problem, it is an economic one. A continent that imports virtually all of its weapons exports capital, creates jobs for foreign workers and engineers, and surrenders leverage over its own security decisions every time a supplier government decides to impose conditions or restrict access. The shift to homegrown defence that Morocco has pioneered and Nigeria is now organising at continental scale is the security equivalent of the industrialisation argument that African economists have made for decades: processing your own resources rather than exporting them raw captures more of the value chain and builds capabilities that compound over time. Africa’s global arms market share is small but growing. If the current generation of co-production deals and technology transfers matures into genuine manufacturing hubs in Rabat, Lagos and Nairobi, the continent will have broken a dependency that has shaped its security landscape since independence.
Source: The Conversation
