The Necropolitics of Drone Bases and Use in the African Context

This paper critically evaluates the establishment of drone bases and the use of drones in several countries in Africa by Western and Arab nations. Despite the significant financial commitments needed, external forces continue to invest heavily in drone bases and operations across the continent, often promoted for the security of Africans. Using secondary sources, this paper employs the concept of ‘necropolitics’ to argue that these drone bases, along with the technologies emanating from them – ostensibly for counter-insurgencies or counter-piracy in regions like the Sahel and the Horn of Africa – represent the deployment of ‘necropolitical technologies of domination’. The paper posits that such technologies enable external forces to control African airspaces and determine who lives and dies, thereby ensuring their acquiescence and subjugation under ‘aerial colonialism’. This paper challenges the prevailing discourse that drone operations primarily serve African interests, advocating for a critical reassessment and renegotiation of such partnerships guided by a pan-African strategy and protocol for drone deployment in African countries.