By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo
Former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusufu Buratai (retd.), has urged African countries to develop indigenous defence technologies and reduce their dependence on imported military systems.
Buratai made the call while speaking at a high-level panel at the International Security Conference on Africa (ISCA) in Kigali, Rwanda, where he warned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems were fundamentally changing the nature of modern warfare.
The former Army Chief said African countries could no longer afford to remain passive consumers of technologies developed for other operational environments.
He stressed the need for African countries to build local capacity to develop, adapt and regulate emerging defence technologies in line with their unique security needs.
