For much of the past two decades, Türkiye’s presence on the African continent was narrated and framed through the lens of humanitarianism: hospitals built by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) scholarships extended to students from Mogadishu to Ouagadougou, and Yunus Emre Institute (YEE) cultural centers that carried Ankara’s new vision and humanitarian diplomacy into capital cities where Western embassies had long since retreated. This perception of Türkiye as a primarily humanitarian actor has not disappeared, but it no longer sits at the center of the relationship between the African continent and Türkiye.
What has displaced this perception of Türkiye is a harder currency altogether, one measured in drone airframes rather than aid packages. The Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) and its heavier sibling, the Bayraktar Akıncı UCAV, have become the most visible symbols of a Turkish foreign policy that increasingly treats military defense exports as a vehicle for alliance-building. The African continent, more than any other region outside Türkiye’s immediate neighborhood, has become the proving ground for this new military and security approach to diplomatic engagements.
The growing need for Turkish military cooperation and bilateral relations on security is not difficult to trace. A Bayraktar TB2, priced at somewhere between $2 million and $5 million (the price range depends on the included equipment and systems), costs a fraction of comparable American or European drone platforms, and it arrives without the geopolitical interest conditionalities, congressional reviews, or parliamentary scrutiny that typically accompany Western arms transfers.
For African governments confronting insurgencies, militias, rebel groups and security issues with strained budgets, that combination of affordability and political convenience and non-interference is decisive. Baykar, the company behind the TB2 and Akıncı lines, now counts more than a dozen African states among its clients, a list that spans North Africa, the Horn, and the Sahel and that continues to grow with each passing procurement cycle.
Somalia remains the clearest illustration of what this military and security partnership looks like when it matures past a single arms sale into something closer to institutional entanglement. Türkiye’s military training facility in Mogadishu, opened in 2017 and reportedly the largest such overseas base Ankara operates, has run alongside a steadily deepening supply relationship, one that culminated in Somalia’s acquisition of the Akıncı and TB2s, as the al-Shabab terrorist group intensified its campaign against Somali government forces. Turkish trainers, Turkish drone equipment, and Turkish-managed port and airport contracts in Mogadishu now sit alongside one another, and it has become a model many African countries expect of relations with Türkiye.
Moreover, Ankara has leaned on this accumulated leverage diplomatically as well, positioning itself as mediator in the dispute that erupted after Ethiopia’s January 2024 memorandum with Somaliland, a deal that would have granted Addis Ababa naval access to the Red Sea in exchange for recognizing Somaliland’s independence. Türkiye’s ability to broker a subsequent diplomatic arrangement between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa owed much to the credibility it had already banked as many African countries' principal security partner and assistance in military capacity building across the continent.
Beyond the Horn, the pattern repeats with variations across the African continent.
Niger, still absorbing the fallout from the 2023 coup and the departure of French forces, received its first Turkish drones between 2021 and 2022 and signed a further financial cooperation agreement in mid-2025 to expand its fleet and bring in additional Turkish trainers to Niamey.
Nigeria, whose Bayraktar purchases have expanded considerably since 2024, now flies TB2s and Hürkuş light attack aircraft against Boko Haram insurgents in its north, while Nigerian and Togolese forces jointly use Turkish drones to patrol the porous frontier they share with Burkina Faso and Niger.
Mali’s forces have credited Turkish-supplied platforms with battlefield gains, including the 2023 recapture of Kidal from separatist fighters. One of its Akıncı drones was shot down near the Algerian border in 2025, a reminder that these platforms are neither invulnerable nor immune to geographical terrain and climatic conditions.
Ethiopia’s use of Bayraktar drones against Tigrayan rebel forces, meanwhile, has been widely credited with tipping a war that had, for two years, resisted decisive military resolution. This is a fact that has not gone unnoticed by neighboring governments weighing their own procurement decisions.
Furthermore, Morocco’s request to host a Baykar production and maintenance facility, announced in late 2024, signals that Ankara intends to make its African footprint not just a matter of exports but of manufacturing presence. This will allow faster delivery to clients across the continent while embedding Turkish industrial interests more permanently within African defense infrastructure.
Kenya’s arrival on Baykar’s client list in late 2024, following the completion of operator training earlier that year, extends this network into East Africa proper. This also suggests that what began as a series of bilateral arrangements is congealing into something closer to a continental military and security architecture, one in which Ankara increasingly functions as the default supplier for governments unwilling or unable to meet Western procurement standards and high prices.
None of this, however, answers the harder question that ought to sit beneath any accounting of Türkiye’s African security and military diplomacy. Can a continent whose conflicts, violence and insecurities are so often rooted in weak governance, contested land and resource claims be stabilized through an instrument that, by design, addresses only the symptom of armed violence rather than its causes?
Drones can degrade a militia or an insurgency’s capacity to strike, but they cannot adjudicate a land dispute, cannot build a functioning judiciary, and cannot resolve the grievances that produce recruits for al-Shabab, Boko Haram, or the Sahel’s extremist networks in the first place.
Yet, Türkiye’s growing security engagement with Africa should not be understood solely through the lens of military hardware and defense exports. Turkish drones and broader military partnerships are undoubtedly reshaping Africa’s security landscape by providing governments with affordable, effective and politically accessible tools to confront immediate security threats.
However, the long-term significance of Ankara’s role on the continent will depend on its ability to move beyond the battlefield and translate security partnerships into broader diplomatic influence. Türkiye has already demonstrated its capacity to mediate complex disputes, from the Somalia-Ethiopia tensions to other regional crises where traditional actors have struggled to produce meaningful outcomes. As Ankara’s political, economic and security ties with African states deepen, it has an opportunity to position itself not only as a defense partner but also as a trusted mediator and peace-building actor. Türkiye, as professor Elem Eyrice-Tepeciklioğlu has observed, has become “Africa’s mediator.”
The future of Africa-Türkiye relations may therefore lie not only in controlling contested skies, but also in helping to resolve the conflicts that continue to shape Africa’s political order on the ground.
