Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are reshaping warfare across the Horn of Africa, transforming from peripheral surveillance tools into central instruments of military strategy. Once restricted to niche intelligence roles, drones today conduct reconnaissance, disrupt supply lines, surveil battlefields in real time, and execute precision strikes against high-value targets in several conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Their appeal to military planners is straightforward: they reduce the risk to personnel, lower operational costs compared to crewed aircraft, and offer a degree of precision that conventional ground operations rarely can. Across the region, these drones are redefining how armed forces fight, plan, and deploy resources – with consequences that extend far beyond the battlefield.
Recent events illustrate this trend with particular clarity. On February 24, 2026, the military spokesperson for the M23 rebel group, Willy Ngoma, was killed in a drone strike near Rubaya, North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The strike, carried out by the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC), targeted a figure who had been sanctioned by both the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU). But it is not an isolated incident. From Tigray to Somalia and the devastated cities of Sudan, drone warfare has become a defining feature of contemporary conflict across the Horn of Africa.
The Tigray War: Drones as a Strategic Instrument
The conflict in Tigray, which lasted from November 2020 to November 2022 and claimed an estimated 600,000 lives, was the first war on the continent in which a government deployed a diversified arsenal of foreign-supplied combat drones as a deliberate component of its military strategy. By late 2021, the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) had acquired Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, Chinese Wing Loong systems, and Iranian Mohajer-6 combat UAVs. The operational impact was significant. When Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) advanced to within 200 kilometres of Addis Ababa in November 2021, drone-backed operations provided the intelligence and firepower that enabled the ENDF to halt and reverse the rebel advance. By December 2021, government forces had pushed the TDF fully back into Tigray.
The civilian toll, however, was severe. A drone strike on January 7, 2022, hit a school compound sheltering thousands of displaced civilians in northwestern Tigray, killing at least 57 people and wounding 42 others. Turkish precision-guided munitions were identified in the wreckage. A further strike on February 7 killed at least 59 people at another displacement camp. Internal documentation compiled by humanitarian organisations recorded over 300 civilian deaths from aerial attacks in a four-month period alone, with strikes hitting markets, farms, public buses, and aid workers in the field.
Somalia: A Long Campaign With Unresolved Results
Somalia has been the site of the longest-running institutional drone campaign on the continent. Since 2007, AFRICOM has conducted over 262 strikes against al Shabaab the al-Qaeda affiliate that controls significant rural territory across southern Somalia – in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia. Strikes have continued into 2026, with coordinated operations recorded as recently as January of this year in the vicinity of Godane, northeast of Mogadishu. Turkey has also emerged as an active participant, conducting at least 19 drone strikes since 2022. The multi-actor character of the campaign raises questions about coordination, civilian protection standards, and accountability when harm occurs.
Al Shabaab has demonstrated considerable resilience throughout. Despite the loss of multiple commanders, the movement continues to govern rural populations, extract revenue through taxation, and carry out complex attacks in Mogadishu. Research drawing on field interviews from the region finds that drone strikes offer an occasional but only reliable check on al Shabaab, allowing the Federal Government to function in Mogadishu rather than resolving the underlying conditions sustaining the insurgency. Nearly two decades of strikes have degraded al Shabaab without defeating it.
Eastern DRC: Drones and the Competition for Resources
In the eastern DRC, the introduction of armed drones has added a new dimension to a prolonged conflict that is, at its core, a competition for strategic resources. The government in Kinshasa acquired Chinese CH-4 attack drones in 2023 and Turkish TB2 systems in 2024, deploying them against M23 rebel positions across North and South Kivu. The Rubaya mining area, where Ngoma was killed, produces between 15 and 30 per cent of the world’s coltan supply, a mineral essential to the manufacture of smartphones, laptops, and other electronics. Control over these deposits has fuelled years of armed competition and continues to shape both the strategic objectives and the geography of drone operations in the region. M23 has responded by developing counter-drone capabilities with Rwandan technical support, including the deployment of man-portable air-defence systems against FARDC UAVs. In February 2026, rebel forces launched a kamikaze drone attack on Kisangani Bangoka International Airport, the FARDC’s primary air support hub. Both sides are now actively developing offensive and defensive aerial capacities, deepening a conflict that already constitutes one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
Sudan: The Largest Drone War on the Continent
Sudan has become the most intense theatre of drone warfare on the African continent. Since civil war erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), over 1,000 drone attacks have been recorded. Sudan accounted for more than half of all drone strikes across 13 African countries in 2024 alone. Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) attributes at least 2,200 deaths to drone attacks since the conflict began, with 80 per cent of those deaths occurring in 2025. Both parties have been armed by competing external sponsors. Iran has supplied the SAF with Mohajer-6 combat UAVs. The RSF has received Chinese and Serbian systems through networks reportedly linked to the United Arab Emirates. The result is an aerial arms race of extraordinary scale, conducted over cities, displacement camps, and humanitarian corridors. Documented violations are among the most serious of any current conflict. An RSF drone strike on October 11, 2025, hit a displacement shelter at Omdurman Islamic University in El Fasher, killing 57 people including 22 women and 17 children. Strikes have hit a mosque during prayers, a kindergarten, a hospital, and multiple convoys carrying United Nations relief supplies. Khartoum International Airport was struck days before its planned reopening. In no case has accountability followed.
A Governance Gap the Region Cannot Afford to Ignore
Across all the four conflicts, a consistent pattern emerges. Drones have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to alter battlefield dynamics and target high-value targets. They have not, however, resolved a single conflict in the region. What they have produced, at scale and with near-total impunity, is civilian casualties, mass displacement of populations, and destruction of infrastructure. The Horn of Africa has no regional framework governing the acquisition, transfer, or battlefield use of armed drones. External suppliers operate in a governance vacuum with no conditionality and no consequences for misuse. As these systems become more capable, more affordable, and more widely available, the absence of governance frameworks represents an increasingly serious threat to regional stability as non-state actors especially violent extremist groups begin to acquire and deploy them especially in the Sahel.
Photo Credit: Stock
Bravin Onditi is a Researcher at the HORN Institute.
