Expansion of US Drone Ops in Africa Comes Amid Rising Opposition to Foreign Military Presence

Nearly two and a half years after the United States’ campaign in Afghanistan ended in an inglorious rout, the US seems poised to expand its military operations in another part of the globe.

The United States is attempting to convince several West African states to allow them to use their airfields to carry out drone operations, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

This move is ostensibly aimed at curbing the spread of Islamist terrorist groups in Ghana, Benin and the Ivory Coast, the media outlet claimed, adding that US drones might purportedly “conduct aerial surveillance of militant movements along the coast and provide over-the-shoulder tactical advice to local troops during combat operations.”

The United States’ drone initiative, however, takes place amid a “shift in public sentiment and attitude” in African states “against foreign military presence,” argued Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigerian policy adviser at the Development Reimagined consultancy.

“The attitude that we are seeing that is very much against foreign military presence, particularly of major power like the US, is because of the concern that we're now in an era of good power competition and the risk of proxy conflict is quite high,” Eguegu said. “Citizens knowing what happened during the Cold War [are] very much averse to foreign troops present.”

He also observed that the US and French military missions in Africa, as well as the UN MINUSMA peacekeeping force, did little to improve the security situation in the countries they were deployed in, while the “successes that are being achieved in counterterrorism” in the region were primarily achieved by the Multinational Joint Task Force comprised of military units from Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Benin.

“While there is room for foreign military cooperation, there is no need for foreign military presence on the continent, because that is what regional armies are there for in the first place,” Eguegu remarked.

He also suggested that further “militarization of security solutions” is unlikely to improve the security situation in Africa and argued for a different approach.

According to Eguegu, the "solution to the Africa security challenges, in West Africa in general, can come in the form of funding support,” when the foreign support essentially amounts to providing weapons and training to local forces and does not necessarily involve “direct military operations” by foreign forces.