Algeria and Angola are the biggest military spenders in
Africa, according to a report on trends in global military expenditures
released on April 13, 2015, by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI).
The report indicates that rapid increases in military
expenditures in both Algeria and Angola are due to the countries’ high oil
revenues. Since 2005, Algeria and Angola are reported to have increased their
expenditures by 12 percent and 6.7 percent respectively to $11.9 billion and
$6.8 billion.
Since 2005, Algeria’s expenditure on military armament has
tripled, according to the report, and it now spends more than 5 percent of its
GDP on its military. In March 2014, SIPRI published a separate report on arms, which found that Algeria was the
leading importer of arms in Africa (accounting for 36 percent of total
imports), with Morocco in second place (22 percent) from 2009 to 2013.
The United States still leads the world in military
expenditures, to the tune of $610 billion in 2014, triple the amount spent by
China, which occupies second position with $216 billion. Russia comes in third
at $84.5 billion. Saudi Arabia, occupies the fourth position in the world with
an estimated $84.5 billion in expenditures, a 112 percent increase since 2005.
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