Turkish and Chinese Drone Makers Are Profiting From Sudan's Massacres

Drones are now the single deadliest weapon killing civilians in Sudan. Read that again. Not artillery, not hunger, not the machete. A machine launched from the sky, guided from a screen thousands of kilometres away, is killing more Sudanese people than any other instrument of war. And the people who build those machines are counting their profits.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk has warned that the drone war is accelerating. Yet for all the destruction, analysts agree on a bitter fact: neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has gained a decisive advantage. The drones bring death to markets, hospitals, and neighbourhoods, and the front lines barely move. This is not a war being won. It is a war being fed.

Consider who is feeding it. Analysts report that the Sudanese military has acquired drones made by Iran and Turkey. The RSF has relied on powerful Chinese drones that are reportedly supplied or operated with the backing of the United Arab Emirates. So the Sudanese army fights with Tehran's and Ankara's hardware, the RSF fights with Beijing's machines and Abu Dhabi's support, and both sides bury the dead in the same cemeteries. Every drone strike is a receipt for someone's export deal. Every civilian killed is a line item in someone else's balance sheet.

Think about the mother in a Darfur village who hears the engine overhead and has seconds to decide whether to run toward her children or away from them. Think about the farmer in Kordofan who cannot plant because the land is a battlefield, and the drought that now covers half of Sudan, according to the United Nations, has already emptied his granary. The drone does not care whether its target is a soldier or a schoolteacher. The drone does not ask for a passport. The drone asks only for a signal, and somebody somewhere is paid to send it.

We have seen this script before, and we must stop pretending we have not. For years, foreign capitals and foreign arms firms have treated Sudan as a marketplace rather than a nation of 50 million people. Weapons flow in through indirect routes, end-user certificates are signed and forgotten, and sanctions are announced with great ceremony and enforced with great reluctance. Those who sell the weapons insist they are not responsible for how they are used. Those who fund the buyers insist they are only pursuing stability. Stability for whom? The answer lies in the ruins of Khartoum and the camps of Darfur.

Now look at the other end of the Indian Ocean, where the same pattern of predation and abandonment plays out at sea. Somali piracy has returned with force, with at least 15 attacks reported since April, the highest number since 2013. On 29 October, the Iranian fishing vessel Azini was seized off the Somali coast, between Bandar Beyla and Xaafun in Puntland. Its crew of 20 faced armed pirates in waters that no Somali state has the capacity to police. Indian naval commandos parachuted onto the vessel to free them. Azini was the third Iranian fishing boat hijacked off the Somali coast since July.

Let us be precise about what this means. Foreign navies arrive when their own citizens, flags, and trade routes are at risk. That is their right. But the fact that a rescue required a foreign warship and a reconnaissance aircraft is an indictment of the African states whose waters these are. Puntland and the federal government in Mogadishu have failed to build coast guards that can patrol their own coastlines. The pirates who once hijacked ships to survive have been replaced by networks with enough money to outmatch local authorities. And the cycle continues: weak states, foreign intervention, and then a foreign-brokered rescue that gets the headlines while the underlying disease goes untreated.

Sudan and the Somali coast are not separate stories. They are two chapters of the same book, written by the same forces. Outside powers compete for ports, minerals, and strategic positions across the continent. Turkey sells drones and builds influence. China finances infrastructure and secures resources. The UAE buys ports, funds militias, and wins contracts. Russia offers its mercenaries in exchange for gold. Each of them speaks the language of partnership and development. Each of them, in the end, treats African sovereignty as a bargaining chip. This is the new scramble for Africa, and it is as extractive as the old one, only now the colonisers have better marketing.

But let us be honest about our own house too. The generals who turned their guns on civilians in Khartoum did not need foreign drones to decide that their people were expendable. The men who command the RSF did not need foreign money to loot, rape, and burn. Foreign suppliers are the accelerant. The matches are African hands. Any honest accounting must hold both the arms dealers in Ankara, Beijing, Tehran, and Abu Dhabi and the warlords in Port Sudan and Nyala to the same standard of accountability.

So what must be done? Start with the arms. The UN Security Council must enforce its existing arms embargoes on Sudan with real monitoring, not diplomatic theatre. Member states must require verifiable end-use certificates for drones and components, publish their export data, and face sanctions when weapons are diverted to conflict zones. Companies that sell combat drones into active civil wars should be named, shamed, and barred from public procurement in democratic countries. Drone manufacturers who profit from civilian deaths have a responsibility, and they must be made to carry it.

The African Union must stop issuing statements that read like condolences and start acting like a guardian of its own charter. The AU's Constitutive Act rejects unconstitutional changes of government and commits to protecting human rights. Sudan has been trapped in a military power struggle that began with the overthrow of civilian transition. Reinstating a credible civilian path, backed by regional guarantees and conditional support, is the only sustainable exit. Botswana built its prosperity on a stable, accountable state and a sound rule of law. Mauritius used transparent institutions and open markets to lift itself from a sugar economy to a diversified one. Senegal proved in 2024 that ballots can still defeat entrenched power when citizens refuse to surrender their vote. Sudan's people deserve the same chance, and they are denied it every day that the drones keep flying.

As for the Somali coast, African states should build joint maritime surveillance, share intelligence, and invest in coast guards answerable to civilian oversight, not to warlords with patronage networks. Puntland and Somaliland, and the federal government, must put their differences aside long enough to protect the fishermen and sailors whose livelihoods depend on those waters.

And now the question for you. How long will we accept that the most lethal weapon in a war on our continent is made in a factory we will never visit, financed by a government we never elected, and sold by a company that never has to look a grieving mother in the eye? How long will we let our own leaders hide behind the excuse that the guns are not theirs, when the trigger is pulled by people they appointed?

We are Africans. This is our continent, our children, and our future. Demand that your government sign and enforce arms control treaties with teeth. Demand that the AU stop protecting coup leaders with its silence. Demand that foreign powers which claim to champion democracy stop financing the men who destroy it. Demand transparency on every arms deal, every port concession, every mining contract. Write to your representatives, share the facts, and refuse to let the drone war become just another headline we scroll past. The drones are killing our people while the companies count their money. Make them count the cost instead.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL