While the continent experienced a 2% contraction in its economy last year, military spending itself increased by more than 5%, rising to more than 43 billion dollars, or nearly 36 billion euros.

At the top of the regional ranking is North Africa. With 8 billion euros, Algeria remains by far the continent's largest spender in this area. Next come Morocco with nearly 4 billion euros spent, then South Africa with its 2.5 billion.

While Sahel countries spend much less, the report nonetheless points to strong increases last year: +31% in Chad, +23% in Mauritania and +22% in Mali. But the francophone African country that spends the most money in this field is Côte d'Ivoire with just over 500 million euros spent last year.

However, these figures likely reflect only part of the reality since the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that published this report works only with open sources. Yet some states may tend to minimize their military spending. Whereas for others like Libya, South Sudan and Eritrea, no data is available.