June 9, 2025: Drones are cheap. Ready-made ones are available from vendors in China, Europe, Asia, North American and Africa. Drone components can be ordered on the internet. This allows anyone to assemble drones suited to their particular needs. There are no limitations on who can buy drones, and the least expensive $300 quad-copter models can be quickly turned into a weapon by attaching some explosives and a triggering mechanism. The drone operators can view what the drone video camera sees using goggles or a viewer on the handheld controller. Fly the drone into a target and it explodes. Another drone can be used to monitor this and confirm the kill.

This form of warfare was brought to Africa in 2011 when a large American drone fired a missile at a convoy in Somalia and killed two top Al Shabab officials. Since then, there have been nearly a thousand drone attacks in over a dozen African countries killing over three thousand people. While the first attacks were American, the locals soon discovered that they too could obtain commercial drones and equip them with explosives. Attacks in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Sudan, and Somalia are responsible for more than 90 percent of the drone attacks.

Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, and Tunisia account for nearly fifteen percent of drone production in Africa. Rebel and terrorist groups buy commercial drones and modify them using instructions found on the internet along with components that can be ordered by mail or obtained from retail outlets. Some groups are using 3D printers to manufacture untraceable drone components. The drones are now active in most African nations for legal consumer or government use or by criminal, rebel or Islamic terrorist groups.

Drones were used by irregular forces in places like Iraq and Afghanistan before their military opponents had them. U.S. troops responded by purchasing drones with their own funds until the military procurement bureaucracy could catch up.

Last year there were 484 drone attacks in 13 African nations that inflicted nearly 1,200 casualties. Over half the drone activity occurred in Sudan where a civil war between the military and the outlaw Rapid Support Forces/RSF has been going on since 2013, with no end in sight. The current outbreak began in 2023 and continues without a likely end date.