Nigeria accounted for 14.02 percent of total military spending in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020.
This was contained in the SIPRI Military Expenditure Fact Sheet highlights released on Sunday evening.
The Nigerian government allocated $2.6 billion (over N1 trillion) to the military in 2020, a 29 percent increase compared with the 2019 allocation to the country’s armed forces and only behind South Africa’s expenditure of $3.2 billion.
The report sighted the fight against the Boko Haram and other extremist groups as a persistent challenge for Nigeria over the past decade.
Nigeria’s military spending was higher than some countries including Afghanistan ($280 million), Chad ($323 million), and Niger ($240 million).
Morocco’s $4.8 billion is the highest in Africa.
Other African countries cited in the report were Uganda ($985 million), Mali ($593), Rwanda ($143 million) and Zambia ($212 million).
Sudan ($934 million), Togo ($116 million), Mozambique ($154 million), Burundi($67.5 million), Ethiopia ($461 million), Angola ($994 million), and Cameroon ($393 million) completed the list.
Globally, the world’s military expenditure in 2020 was estimated at $1.98 trillion, the highest since 1988.
World’s military expenditure last year was 2.6 percent higher in real terms than in 2019 and 9.3 percent higher than in 2011.
The global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of global gross domestic product—rose by 0.2 percentage points in 2020 to 2.4 percent
With a military budget of an estimated $778 billion, the United States remained the world’s largest spender in 2020, accounting for 39 percent of global military spending.
In 2020, the US spent almost as much on its military as the next 12 largest spenders combined.
China has world’s second largest military expenditure in 2020, spent $252 billion and accounted for 13 percent of the global total.
Russia came in third with $61.7 billion military expenditure.
