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Nigeria’s Military ranked 4th in Africa, 44th best in the World – Report

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US firm Global Fire Power just unveiled its 2019 ranking of the most powerful armies in the world. The ranking put Nigeria at the 4th in Africa out of 34 countries, and 44th in the world.

Africa’s top 5 military powers are Egypt (12th in the world), Algeria (23rd in the world), South Africa (33rd), Nigeria (44th), Angola (48th) and Ethiopia (51st in the world).

Egypt has the most powerful military in the continent and the twelfth globally (out of 137 countries) with a score of 0.2283. With more than 211 jet fighters, Egypt is the ninth world’s air power while Nigeria has 8 in its arsenal.

Some of the 24 armoured vehicles donated by the United States to the Nigerian military at the Nigerian Army 9th Brigade Parade Ground in Lagos, on January 7, 2016. The U.S. government donated the vehicles to help fight Boko Haram, an extremist group whose six-year insurgency has killed over 17,000 people. / AFP / STEFAN HEUNIS (Photo credit should read STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Nigeria is credited with 120,000 (Est.) total military personnel, 77, 108, 499 available manpower (ahead of Russia and Japan with 69,640, 160 and 53, 873,803 available manpower respectively), those fit for service stood at 43, 180,760, citizens reaching military age stands at 3,454,461.

Out of the total military personnel, 120, 000 are active while none are reserved, the reports stated.

The African top 5 is immediately followed by Angola (6th in Africa and 58th in the world) that lost its 2018 place to Ethiopia but is ahead of Morocco with a score of 0.8154.

Morocco has the 7th military power in Africa (61st in the world) with a score of 0.8244. It is followed by Sudan (with a score of 1.0051), the DRC (a score of 1.0631) and Libya (a score of 1.2349).

Let’s note that the global firepower ranking is based on five criteria namely, the number of serving military members, the naval force, fuel availability for military operations, the number of jet fighters, the defence budget and logistics flexibility.

According to this “power index”, the perfect score should be 0.0000 which is, in fact, impossible to attain. The farther a country is from this score, the lower it is in the index. The index does not take nuclear power into account and does not penalize landlocked countries that have no naval powers.

Let’s also note that many countries made significant progress. For instance, Côte d’Ivoire, the 21st military power in Africa jumped to the 104th place in the world (119th in 2018) while Mali (18th in Africa) slashed the 99th place. The world top 5 are the USA, Russia, China, India and France.

2019 African power index according to the Global Fire Power

African ranking Countries World ranking
1.                    Egypt 12
2.                    Algeria 27
3.                    South Africa 32
4.                    Nigeria 44
5.                    Ethiopia 47
6.                    Angola 58
7.                    Morocco 61
8.                    Sudan 69
9.                     DR Congo 72
10.                Libya 77
11.                Zambia 78
12.                Tunisia 80
13.                Zimbabwe 83
14.                Kenya 86
15.                Uganda 93
16.                Chad 95
17.                Tanzania 97
18.                Mali 99
19.                Botswana 100
20.                Cameroon 102
21.                Côte d’Ivoire 104
22.                Ghana 108
23.                Mozambique 109
24.                South Sudan 113
25.                Niger 116
26.                Republic of Congo 122
27.                Madagascar 124
28.                Namibia 126
29.                Gabon 128
30.                Mauritania 129
31.                Somalia 130
32.                Republic of Central Africa 132
33.                Sierra Leone 134
34.                Liberia 136
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