African Drones | C/O Futures Book Review

Lisa J. Campbell reviewed Drones in the African Battlespaces, edited by Wayne Stephen Coetzee and Dries Putter, in a recent C/O Futures Book Review. The book is a collection of articles on drone technology in Africa.

Here’s a quick summary of Cambell’s findings.

1. Most scholarship on African security comes from European and American researchers. This volume draws primarily on African contributors. This grounding shows in this book. 
2. Africa is not a passive theater for drone deployment. It is an active arena where geopolitical competition is showing up in the who’s who of drone innovation and production– namely, the U.S., Turkey, Iran and China. Some tech is more advanced, and some tech less– such as the Turkish Bayraktar TB2– but most UAV tech is externally sourced, or at least inspired. And its having serious effects on conflicts throughout the continent.
3. Campbell takes care to highlight an article on typology, arguing that a system-centric approach to classification is superior to a platform-centric one. The latter model is what the drone world has followed thus far, leading to a fragmentation of knowledge. This is particularly true in Africa, where drones are evolving in many directions simultaneously as different conflicts require different tech.
4. An under-discussed aspect of African drone development is its coastline. Many maritime use cases exist that push maritime drone development to the vanguard. The Seychelles and Nigeria come up as leaders in this regard.
5. Partly a nod to Africa’s centrality to the live, rapid development of drone technology, Campbell does note that the book’s limitation is its outdatedness. For example, the Sudan conflict’s drone landscape, which we’ve discussed in earlier Discourses, escalated right as the book came to press. As a result, some of the most important developments are left out.

Find the full book at Springer Nature.

While you’re here…

Read Crispin Burke’s take on smart drone strategy for the U.S. Army: “Small Drones, Big Limits: A Smarter Drone Strategy.“