Despite Slumping Defense Sales, Opportunities Abound in Africa.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

Facing threats from civil conflicts and terrorist organizations such as al-Shabab and Boko Haram, some African nations are investing in equipment even as defense spending continues to be low across the continent.

"If we look at military spending, then Africa has seen a decline over the last three years," said Nan Tian, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's arms and military expenditure program. "Its levels are still higher than they were 10 years ago, but we are definitely seeing a decline within African military spending, both in terms of Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as North Africa."

SIPRI analyzes defense sales in five-year periods. Military arms imports on the continent decreased by 22 percent between 2008-2012 and 2013-2017, according to a report titled, "Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2017."

Lower oil prices hit the continent hard and led to substantial cuts in military investments among the largest spenders in Africa including countries such as Angola and Algeria, Tian said. At its peak in 2014, oil prices surpassed $100 per barrel. It has dropped to around $60 per barrel now, he added.

Unless "prices recover to a high enough level, certain of the large spenders in the region can't actually afford to increase their spending," he said. "They simply don't have the fiscal capacity to do so."

At the same time, many countries are battling terrorist organizations or facing civil war, which is driving some spending, said Derek Bisaccio, an analyst at Forecast International, a Newtown, Connecticut-based market consulting firm.

"Most of the big countries are looking at both counterinsurgency and peer-to-peer conflict," he said. "A lot of the smaller militaries are worried mostly along the lines of counterinsurgency."

That means nations will be looking for equipment that will give them mobility and allow them to deploy rapidly to remote locations, he said. These could include areas that are in rough terrain and far from population centers and military bases, he added.

Such platforms include light vehicles, helicopters and surveillance aircraft.

There is also a need to better protect vehicles from improvised explosive devices, Bisaccio said.

Despite African nations having smaller budgets, there are still a number of opportunities for foreign countries to sell them arms, Bisaccio said.

"In many of these countries, they space procurement over time. And because they look at so many different suppliers, that...