African Military Spending 2022

Much of the western world in 2022 has been focused on the conflict currently happening between Ukraine and Russia. And while this cause is incredibly real and provocative it did turn my head to what equally devastating conflicts could be happening on the continent, that are not given as much light in the media.

Conflicts have continued and started all over the continent in 2022 alone. From the continued instability in Libya, the organized political violence in Burkina Faso, the civil war in Ethiopia, and the armed combat in the Central African Republic.

Inspired by this article on the visual capitalist, I decided to take a look at this topic through the lens of military spending. I’ll be using data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the visualization shows which African countries spent the most on their military in 2021, along with their overall share of global military spending.

Which countries spent the most on Military?

In absolute terms, Algeria has the highest overall military spending in 2021. They spent just over $9.1B, making up 25% of total military spending in Africa. This amount is actually a 6% decrease from the previous year when they spent 9.7B on military spending, following the trend of their slow reduction in military spending since 2019.

Morocco, is the next highest with a total spend of $4.9B, that is just over half of the spend of Algeria showing a drastic difference between the top spenders and the rest. It still makes up 13% of the total spending in Africa. Morocco has a continuous gentle increase in military spend since 2015 with a dramatic increase in 2020.

Country	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Algeria	10,252	9,709	9,311	10,045	9,708	9,116
Morocco	3,561	3,666	3,688	3,765	4,831	4,997
Nigeria	1,921	1,837	2,167	1,988	2,568	4,017
South Africa	3,316	3,268	3,132	3,111	3,231	2,803
Tunisia	964	895	899	1,105	1,157	1,159

Which country prioritizes its military?

The question came out when digging into the data. The thing is whilst some countries such as those listed in the article earlier actually have some rather substantial conflicts that require attention, not as much of their government spending is actually put into their military. And those currently listed as the top spenders in the military, when put in order of how much of their budget do they actually put into the military, send out a different message

Whilst Algeria and Morocco remain a constant in both top 5 lists, we can see the country list has changed quite a bit. First of all Chad, whilst its total military spending takes up less than 1 % of the continent’s total military spending, takes up the most out of its budget at 15%. And this makes sense currently in Chad there is an intense conflict with armed rebels in the north following the national election the year before. It’s important to note that Libya is not included in the list due to a lack of data.

Africa	2020	2021
Chad	15.79%	15.70%
Algeria	17.39%	15.24%
Morocco	11.70%	13.20%
Mauritania	13.12%	12.54%
Uganda	12.13%	11.87%

All this is to say that context matters, how much someone spends in the military may not be a reflection of their intentions But when looking at what percentage of what they have is focused on military expenditure you begin to weed out who is intentional about pushing a military-focused agenda.

The trend of war globally continues to escalate. And whilst the conflicts happening on the continent may not get as much western press coverage there is a crazy amount of investment in them. As we move into 2022, we’ll aim to keep a watchful eye on the conclusion of these conflicts.