Military Development in Africa: The Political and Economic Risks of Arms Transfers by Bruce E Arlinghaus

Author:Bruce E Arlinghaus [Arlinghaus, Bruce E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, African Studies, African, Social Science, Political Science, World
ISBN: 9780429705090
Google: LCyNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 44598123
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Each of these points deserves further elaboration, especially as they apply to the new conventional weapons and to Africa. Taken together, they constitute what have come to be called "back-end" problems,6 where countries possess the necessary money or credit to acquire weapons on the "front-end" of a procurement program, but lack the infrastructure and manpower to absorb them after the sale. As a result of the need for extensive follow-on training and facility development, recipient nations experience a wide variance between operational and nominal inventories. The former refers to the number of, say, aircraft that are flyable, as opposed to the latter, which would be the number of aircraft possessed by the country's air force. For most developed countries, this variance averages about only 10 percent; for most developing countries, and in Africa especially, it is usually in excess of 50 percent.7

Inadequate Technical, Educational, and Industrial Base. Military micro-competence is dependent upon this base. In African countries, with literacy rates averaging under 50 percent,8 it can be considered to be virtually nonexistent—especially since those receiving schooling are the young, and they very often are being educated in irrelevant subjects. "Persons qualified to teach scientific, technical or vocational subjects are almost non-existent in many countries,"9 and it is in precisely those subjects that Africa's economic and military needs lie.

Low literacy rates are not unknown in developed-nation armies,10 but the problem is particularly acute in Africa as it affects the capacity to absorb new weapons systems:

The effective use of military equipment ultimately depends on the user. If technology is too complex for forces who have only minimal training, the potential effectiveness of a military system will obviously not be realized. This factor—the level of skilled manpower in a nation's armed forces—clearly is an additional element to consider when judging the utility of a specific arms transfer. If the forces on the ground cannot handle a given technology, it makes little sense to provide them with such technology.11

The transfer of a particular weapons system does not automatically confer a new military capability on the recipient. It may be the intention, but not always the result. A host of other factors—strategy and tactics, logistics support, training levels, and so on—must be considered in assessing the effectiveness of a nation's armed forces, and the impact of a particular military procurement.12

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