Attack drones launched by the Government of National Accord during Libya’s civil war in 2020 reportedly used artificial intelligence (AI) to locate, target and fire upon vehicles and troops that belonged to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army.
The Kargu-2, made by Turkish company STM, comes with “automatic target selection and facial-recognition capabilities,” leading some experts to contend that Libya was the site of the first autonomous combat weapon used in Africa.
“It’s been five years now, and it is clear that this was not the last attack of this kind,” said Africa Center for Strategic Studies researcher Nate Allen while hosting a March 14 webinar titled “AI Applications in the Military and Security Domain.”
“We live in an age where warfare is becoming increasingly autonomous, and this is having profound consequences for the nature of warfare in Africa. The advances of artificial intelligence are one of the key drivers of this increasingly autonomous nature of conflict.”
At tactical and operational levels, AI is being used for surveillance, situational awareness and intelligence gathering. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns and predict events, AI is making its way into automated navigational, targeting and decision-support systems.
Experts such as Moses Khanyile, director of the Defense Artificial Intelligence Research Unit at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, believe that, in the near future, AI will be used in more complex strategic decision-making.
“In the battlefield, in the deployment space, it is very important for purposes of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR),” he said during the webinar. “We’re talking about domain awareness, the eyes and ears for the deployed forces, things like the changes in weather, the changes in topography, enemy troop movements.”
Others preach patience, noting that any new technology that is rushed into real-world applications comes with vulnerabilities, some unforeseeable. Senator Iroegbu, founder of the Nigeria-based online magazine Global Sentinel, has said that although AI has security sector benefits, the technology must be treated with caution.
“It limits casualties in terms of the number of soldiers that will be deployed, so you conserve your boots,” he told Voice of America. “It helps penetrate rough terrains, gather more intelligence. It’s good that there’s growing awareness of the issue of artificial intelligence. … [But] more sensitization needs to be done, and more policy aspects of it need to be developed.”
Khanyile distinguishes between AI applications off and on the battlefield.
“AI is very crucial for improving productivity for the armed forces by automating a lot of regular administrative and management responsibilities, things like inventory and stock management,” he said.
Defense forces also can save money using AI in training and simulations, enabling Soldiers to acquire skills and reach new levels of proficiency with fewer resources.
Once troops are deployed, AI can provide critical support for decision-making in areas such as force structure and design, research and development, and long-term planning, Khanyile said.
“All of those require a lot of brain power, and time is not always on the side of the commanders,” he said. “With AI-enabled resources, it is possible to make those with relative speed.”
Sam Segun, a senior researcher with the Global Center on AI Governance and an AI Innovation & Technology consultant for the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, said Africa has many examples of law enforcement operations using these resources.
In Nigeria, a tech firm called Efuelite Solutions Ltd. created an AI tool to help financial institutions detect and prevent money laundering and terrorism financing by automating the monitoring of transactions, detecting suspicious activity and assessing customer risk.
A nature reserve in Tanzania uses a camera-based AI application called TrailGuard, which it has trained to recognize people, specific wildlife species and vehicles such as logging trucks — even at night. It has assisted in the arrests of 30 poachers since 2018.
Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria are using cameras and motion sensors to produce data for AI modeling tools to disrupt the poaching of pangolins, predicting the paths that poachers might take and identifying vulnerabilities in smuggling and trafficking networks.
Ghana and Nigeria use a tool called Digital Earth that analyzes satellite images to identify and track the use of access roads to remote illegal mining sites.
“This has been particularly helpful for these countries trying to protect natural resources that tend to exacerbate existing conflicts and morphs into ethnic conflict as well,” Segun said in the webinar.
“In the maritime space, 17 African countries use a technology called Skylight, which offers maritime and satellite data for AI-powered pattern recognition to help detect illegal fishing and help with combating piracy.”
At the 2024 Inaugural African Regional Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in Military workshop in Nairobi, Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces Gen. Charles Kahariri said it will be critical for African countries to build their own AI development and deployment capabilities. But he also called for regulation and oversight.
“Developing a comprehensive regulatory framework that governs the use of AI in military operations is essential,” he said in a speech. “Policymakers must work closely with technologies, ethicists and military experts to create policies that balance innovation with responsibility.”
