Spending on military up by 25p.c.

Kenya’s spending on military has grown by 25 per cent in the past decade, according to a Swedish think-tank.

The group that specialises in global military trends said this in an analysis published on Monday.

Spending on security forces, excluding police, reached $594 million (about Sh50 billion) in Kenya last year, reports the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

Military spending also consumes a steadily larger share of the country’s gross domestic product, Sipri data shows.

In 1999 — the latest year for which this survey is available — the military accounted for 1.2 per cent of Kenya’s total output of goods and services. The military share of GDP stood at 2 per cent.

Terrorism threat

That trend “doesn’t look alarming,” Dr Olawale Ismail, an Africa expert at Sipri, said.

In an interview with the Nation on Tuesday, Dr Ismail said it is not clear whether Kenya’s military spending hampers development.

“Without security there cannot be development,” he pointed out. Dr Ismail specifically cited Kenya’s military environment in East Africa, with the threat of terrorism from Somalia drawing Kenya into “the global fight against transnational terror networks”.

Military spending is “not necessarily anti-development,” Dr Ismail added.

He said about 80 per cent of such spending in Africa does not go to buying weapons, but to employ large numbers of citizens.