Security specalists at a plenary session of the tenth edition of the Policy Centre for the New South’s APSACO, have explained how commercial drones, encrypted platforms, and artificial intelligence are profoundly reshaping the dynamics of violence in the Sahel and across the continent.
APSACO, organised by the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Salé, was dedicated to “low-cost technologies and the transformation of conflict dynamics.”
Among the speakers, Salem A. Salem, Niccola Milnes, Emiliano Alessandri, and Djenabou Cissé, a research associate at the Foundation for Scientific Research (France), reached a shared conclusion: the democratisation of these tools is not simply an addition of weaponry, but a structural recomposition of the balance of power between states and non-state armed actors.
The drone revealing strategic rebalancing
Niccola Milnes, a specialist in unmanned aerial systems, identified the most decisive change as the breakdown of the state monopoly on air control. Where states previously enjoyed undisputed air superiority, non-state armed groups now have access to surveillance and air strike capabilities at marginal cost.
She illustrated the resulting economic asymmetry with a striking example: it cost the Malian state between three and five million dollars to transport a combat unit to Bamako, while an opposing group could mobilise a few drones and several dozen fighters for a fraction of that amount.
The speaker also emphasized the temporal depth of the threat. The attack on Sevare – a reference to the April 2026 operations claimed by JNIM – demonstrated, according to her, an operational mastery of FPV (First Person View) drones requiring at least a year of preparation.
“We need to think backward: if this capability is demonstrated today, it means they’ve been working on something else for a year already,” she warned, urging action to anticipate the next generation of capabilities rather than reacting to attacks already carried out.
She did, however, identify a persistent structural vulnerability among armed groups: their serious inventory problem. Lacking flight simulators, and operating in extreme environmental conditions – heat, sand, lithium-ion battery failures – each drone lost in training or operations is difficult to replace.
“When they release images of a raid on a base, there’s typically only one drone involved,” she observed, highlighting the contrast with the hundreds of thousands of drones consumed monthly in the Ukrainian theatre.
It is this imbalance that states can capitalise on, provided they quickly mobilise local industrial capacity. She cited Terra Industries in Nigeria as an example, the first company in the region
to produce drones locally, backed by an investment from Palantir.
Furthermore, Niccola Milnes specified that the Azawad Liberation Front – a separatist group legally distinct from JNIM but frequently operating in coordination with it – allegedly received training from
Ukraine in drone warfare techniques, the methods of which subsequently spread to other armed groups in the region.
Libya, a hub of illicit technological geography
Salem A. Salem placed these developments within a broader geography of illicit economies. Libya occupies a central position: border control by militias has transformed the territory into a transit hub, enabling the delivery of technological equipment to Sahelian conflict zones via smuggling routes. Encrypted platforms, notably Telegram and WhatsApp, play a role in maintaining the horizontal and vertical cohesion of these militias, beyond the reach of state control, and are fueled by external actors who do not need to send personnel or weapons to destabilise a political process.
He recalled the Libyan precedent of 2019, when Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones profoundly altered the military balance of power, triggering a wave of African orders and illustrating the speed with which doctrines spread across the continent.
While emphasising the destabilising effects of these technologies, Salem A. Salem sought to reframe the discussion, stating, “Technology did not create African conflicts. These conflicts are rooted in governance failures, ethnic tensions, and marginalization.”
However, it has made them faster, better organized, more visible, and more internationalised – without, however, allowing armed groups to “hold a capital.” Bamako, according to him, is the most recent demonstration of this.
AI: a qualitative change with still unpredictable effects
Emiliano Alessandri broadened the perspective to include the implications of artificial intelligence, describing it as a qualitative change comparable to what the internet represented for terrorism in the early 2000s, “but potentially on steroids.”
He pointed to two major drivers of transformation: first, the ability of drones to operate autonomously, without human control, to identify and strike targets; second, the proliferation of information manipulation and recruitment operations made possible by AI agents, capable of conducting thousands of interactions simultaneously in real time.
“A new actor is being introduced into the arena of violence,” he warned, also mentioning the use of deepfakes as a tool for creating synthetic realities indistinguishable from the real world.
Alessandri, however, refrained from any catastrophism, recalling that military history has always seen cycles of adopting affordable technologies, from improvised explosive devices to the internet.
States also have levers at their disposal: predictive modelling using AI based on documented attack patterns – what Niccola Milnes termed “purple teaming” assisted by AI – constitutes, according to him, a promising avenue for anticipating the next actions of armed groups.
The supply chain: a vulnerable but diffuse link
In response to questions from the audience, the speakers addressed the issue of drone supply to non-state armed groups. Djenabou Cisse provided valuable historical context, recalling that the first drone flight on the African continent dates back to 1997, thus highlighting that this technology is not new to Africa and that its potential remains largely untapped.
Niccola Milnes, for his part, emphasised the lack of a single supplier: the devices are acquired as commercial quadcopters such as the DJI Phantom, available on local markets, but also seized during
raids on military bases and then rebuilt from salvaged components.
Cybersecurity was also discussed, with Milnes warning that even reliability rates of 98 or 99% remain insufficient when it comes to critical hospital, infrastructure, or aeronautical systems.
AC/te/Sf/fss/as/APA