France in 2023 has risen to second place among arms exporting countries in the world, we talked about it in Lines of Defense last week… But behind this success there is a hole in the racket, and this fault is the African continent. Paris exports its weapons everywhere, but almost not to Africa even though the French army is present there, a paradox. Decryption.
Some figures to illustrate this gap. Of the export authorizations issued in 2022, 76% are to Europe, 12% to the Middle East, 6% to North America, 3% to North Africa, 2% to South America. South, 1% in Asia… In this pie chart, sub-Saharan Africa does not appear. Over a decade, from 2013 to 2022, sub-Saharan Africa represented only 1.5% of French military equipment exports. It’s marginal, what are the reasons?
During a press conference, we asked the question a few days ago to Sébastien LecornuMinister of the Armed Forces: “ This is a very good question that has a lot to do with our software, to be completely transparent. Already, the French military presence has rather acculturated this ministry and also the partner who could welcome us. A logic of ‘we do instead of’. When I asked Emmanuel Chiva, the general delegate for Armaments, to go to Africa, we realized that a French DGA had never officially set foot in Africa. All is said. We left too much ground to a certain number of competitors. Moreover, it was Minister Ouattara, in Ivory Coast, who made me aware of this. They have budgets, Senegal the same which is a country which will also be a hydrocarbon producing country, which will therefore have to protect itself from particular terrorist threats, particularly at sea. But we can clearly see that we have a modification of the African armies. It is often French armies which participate in this rise in power. But there remained precisely the capacity block. And we see it on drones for example, we see it on small boats, we also see it perhaps tomorrow on small aircraft on which we obviously have moves to play. »
One in two weapons on the African continent is a Russian weapon
The Russians and Chinese have been present for a long time, but in recent years new competitors have positioned themselves on this market.
The Turks, for example, are the new arrivals in Africa, with a real strategy of establishment… Turkish Airlines has opened more than sixty ports of call on the continent over the last three years, a dynamic that benefits its defense industry. Peer de Jong, vice-president of Themiis (strategy and defense consulting company), advises several governments on security issues; he saw the Turks offering, via private military companies, attractive offers all inclusive“ Through structures, such as SADAT, which are Turkish SMPs which for around ten years have had somewhat the same ‘business model’ in quotation marks as Wagner, that is to say offering both the training of troops , transfer and sale of equipment. And we see in Africa today that there is a diffusion of quality Turkish weaponry, which mainly concerns everything that involves troop transport, individual weaponry, but also drones. So African armies are able to equip themselves at a relatively affordable cost with equipment that is theoretically inaccessible in Europe. »
African armies are modernizing rapidly, for example with the TB2 Bayraktar drone, star of the war in Ukraine of which around ten African countries have already placed orders with the Turkish manufacturer. A booming market which for the moment eludes French manufacturers.