WASHINGTON - The American site Global Fire Power (GFP) has published its 2019 ranking of African military powers. For this year, 34 countries of the continent were analyzed in order to determine the heavyweights of the continent in terms of defense.
As in 2018, Egypt is the first military power on the continent and 12 th in the world (out of 137) with a score of 0.2283. With more than 211 combat aircraft, the country led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has the 9 th air power in the world. It is followed by Algeria, which recorded a drop in the world rankings, passing the 27 th spot (against the 23 th spot in 2018), but maintains its position of 2 nd African military power with a score of 0.4551 .
South Africa (0.5405 point), Nigeria (0.7007 point) and Ethiopia (0.7361 point) respectively occupy 3 rd place (32 nd world), 4 th place (44 th world ) and fifth (47 th worldwide).
This top 5 African is immediately followed by Angola (6 th African and 58 th worldwide), dethroned by Ethiopia, but with a score of 0.8154 remains ahead of Morocco. The latter (7 th Africa) occupies the 61 th place worldwide with a score of 0.8244, followed by Sudan (8 th African and 69 th worldwide) with a score of 1.0051. The DRC (9 th African and 72 th worldwide) and Libya (10 th African and 77 th worldwide) completed the top 10 African, with scores of 1.0631 and 1.2349 respectively.
As a reminder, the GFP ranking is based on fifty criteria, including the number of active military personnel, the naval force, the availability of fuel for military operations, the number of fighter jets, the budget devoted to defense and logistical flexibility. .
According to this "power index", the perfect score would be 0.0000, which is impossible in practice. So, the further we move away from this score, the more we fall in the standings. It does not take into account nuclear stocks and does not penalize landlocked countries by the absence of a naval force.
Note that several countries have made significant progress in terms of their military power. Ivory Coast, 21 th African military power, for example, climbed to 104 th place worldwide (against 119 in 2018) while Mali, 18 th African military power has reached the 99 th spot (against 114 the last year).
Globally, the top 5 of the world's largest military powers remain dominated by the USA, followed by Russia, China, India and France.
