# Unmanned Ground Vehicles Are Arriving on Africa’s Battlefields

- Link: https://www.unmanned.africa/unmanned-ground-vehicles-are-arriving-on-africas-battlefields/
- Published: 2026-10-12T06:42:06+00:00
- Author: Unmanned Africa

In September 2019, an Estonian infantry platoon patrolling Gao, in northern Mali,
tried something new: it sent a small tracked robot down the street ahead of its 
soldiers. The machine was a Milrem Robotics THeMIS, among the first unmanned ground
vehicles, or UGVs, to work alongside troops in a live conflict zone. Seven years
later, a Nigerian startup is fitting machine guns and rocket launchers to a tracked
robot of its own, and Egypt is preparing series production of a six-wheeled robot,
with Turkish technical support, at a state-owned defence factory.

Africa’s ground robots remain a small and uneven market, and much of what is said
about them runs ahead of the evidence. The direction of travel is still clear: from
mine clearance and bomb disposal toward patrol, resupply and, increasingly, armed
support for infantry. This article follows that shift country by country, checks
it against what is documented, and says plainly where the public record runs thin.

### Mining roots, military ambitions

The continent’s earliest homegrown UGVs came out of its mines. South Africa’s DCD
Protected Mobility launched the Testudo at the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD)
exhibition in 2014, a 260-kilogram tracked vehicle offered in remote-controlled 
or autonomous versions, which its makers said had been tested in the country’s hard-
rock mines and could run for up to six hours on one charge, according to [defenceWeb](https://defenceweb.co.za/industry/industry-industry/dcd-launches-testudo-unmanned-ground-vehicle/).
The same show saw B-Cat Military unveil the Pathfinder, a six- or eight-wheeled 
machine that grew out of a civilian vehicle used to survey blasting areas underground.
B-Cat later made it amphibious, able to carry 300 kilograms through water at 5 kilometres
per hour, and [pitched it to the South African National Defence Force](https://defenceweb.co.za/land/land-land/b-cat-military-refining-pathfinder-unmanned-ground-vehicle/)
for border patrol, improvised explosive device (IED) detection and ambush early 
warning.

What neither company appears to have secured is a public military order. Reporting
from the period describes talks with the defence force, and nothing reviewed for
this article confirms a purchase. [Military Africa’s survey of the field](https://www.military.africa/2025/08/expanding-the-role-of-ugvs-on-the-modern-african-battlefield/)
records one more South African milestone: in 2019, Rheinmetall demonstrated an armed
Mission Master UGV firing a salvo of rockets at the Overberg Test Range in front
of observers from 53 countries. Armed ground robots, in other words, have been shown
off in Africa for years. African buyers have been scarcer.

### Where the robots first worked: bombs and booby traps

Foreign-built machines reached real operations first. The THeMIS arrived in Mali
in April 2019 with Estonian troops serving in Operation Barkhane, the French-led
counter-insurgency mission, and began [foot patrols in Gao](https://www.military.africa/2019/10/milrem-robotics-themis-ugv-patrols-streets-of-mali/)
that September. By the time the deployment ended in 2020, Milrem said the vehicle
had been operational for more than 330 hours, [according to defenceWeb](https://defenceweb.co.za/featured/milrems-themis-unmanned-ground-vehicle-concludes-mali-deployment/).
Military Africa’s account adds that it worked in temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius,
covered some 1,200 kilometres of lava-rock terrain, hauled about half a tonne of
water and ammunition to hard-to-reach positions, and survived proximity to a vehicle
bomb carrying 200 kilograms of explosives. A senior Milrem executive called Mali
[“the perfect place to test new technology”](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190930005043/en/Estonian-Infantry-Platoon-Deploys-Milrem-Robotics%E2%80%99-THeMIS-UGV-on-Patrol-for-the-First-Time-in-Mali),
a candid line that captures how the continent was treated at the time: as a proving
ground for other countries’ hardware. The platoon’s own stated aim was more modest
than the marketing: its officers said they were hunting for the technical and procedural
bottlenecks of putting a robot on patrol, a reminder that these first deployments
were experiments as much as operations.

Libya supplies the second documented case. After Khalifa Haftar’s forces retreated
from Tripoli’s southern suburbs in the spring of 2020, the Tripoli-based Government
of National Accord used several UGVs to clear unexploded ordnance left behind, including
a Safariland Digital Vanguard DV-S operated by an explosive ordnance disposal team
in Ain Zara, according to [photographs the Interior Ministry released on 1 June](https://www.military.africa/2020/06/unmanned-ground-vehicles-clears-mines-in-libya/)
and Military Africa’s reporting on them.

Nigeria’s use is older than most readers assume. Nigerian media reported in 2016
that the army had taken delivery of a [Slovak-made Bozena-5](https://www.legit.ng/1077090-nigerian-army-acquires-sophisticated-military-equipment-fight-boko-haram-pho.html),
a mine- and IED-clearing machine that the outlet said was apparently already in 
use on roads in Borno State. The pattern across all three cases is the same: the
robot goes first where a person should not. That logic of trading a machine for 
a life explains why bomb disposal, route clearance and patrol support dominate the
documented record, and why the record mostly stops there.

### Tunisia’s robots chose civilian work

Tunisia took a different path. Military Africa reports that the Anti-terrorism Battalion
uses the Throwbot 2, a throwable camera robot weighing little more than a kilogram,
to look inside buildings before soldiers enter. The more distinctive story is commercial.
Enova Robotics, founded in 2014, makes the PGuard, a multi-terrain security robot
fitted, according to Military Africa’s profile, with infrared and thermal cameras,
an omnidirectional audio system, GPS, laser ranging and a siren-and-light alarm.
It [patrolled Tunis’s Habib Bourguiba Avenue](https://www.military.africa/2024/09/tunisia-supply-pguard-ugv-to-united-states/)
during the country’s 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. In 2024 the United States ordered fifty
of its security robots, with the first delivered on 5 September, according to Tunisian
business outlet [WMC](https://www.webmanagercenter.com/2024/09/06/529905/un-robot-tunisien-aux-etats-unis-comment-une-pme-a-t-elle-reussi-a-percer-le-marche-americain/),
which reported that the contract ran to November 2025 and that the company had deliberately
chosen civilian over military use.

That makes Tunisia the clearest example on the continent of a ground-robot export
success that is not a military one. It also shows how blurred the line between security
robots and combat robots can be, and how hard it is to count either in a single 
market figure, a theme this site touched on in its look at [indigenization rates across eight countries](https://www.unmanned.africa/africas-drone-indigenization-numbers-hide-more-than-they-show/).

### Egypt and Nigeria build the armed generation

Egypt is moving from buying to building, under a Turkish licence. In March 2025,
Turkey’s Havelsan and Egypt’s Kader Factory for Developed Industries signed an agreement
to co-produce UGVs in Egypt, with [technology transfer and licensing support from Havelsan](https://www.havelsan.com/en/news/egypt-agreement-signed-unmanned-ground-vehicles).
At the Egypt Defence Expo in December 2025, Egypt showed a six-wheeled UGV called
Aqrab, which a Havelsan official told [Breaking Defense](https://breakingdefense.com/2025/12/from-french-fighter-jets-to-chinese-drones-egypt-expands-global-supply-chain-footprint/)
had been produced in about three months and was ready for series production, and
which the official described as a distinct Egyptian design rather than a copy of
Havelsan’s Barkan. Separately, Military Africa reported that the Arab Organization
for Industrialization (AOI) had unveiled the [Anubis](https://www.military.africa/2025/11/egypt-unveils-anubis-combat-ugv/),
a small wheeled combat robot whose remote weapon station can take 7.62-millimetre
or 12.7-millimetre machine guns or an automatic grenade launcher, and which can 
be reconfigured for anti-tank missiles or to carry small drones. Military Africa
suggested the Anubis probably benefits from Turkish expertise, though that is inference
rather than a confirmed link. Neither vehicle has yet been reported in unit service.
Egypt’s approach echoes a distinction this site has drawn before, in its [survey of African drone manufacturers](https://www.unmanned.africa/africas-military-drone-manufacturers-a-continental-survey/):
building under licence and designing from scratch are different achievements.

Nigeria’s flagship is the Duma, a tracked UGV from Terra Industries, the Abuja startup
formerly known as Terrahaptix. [Military Africa reported in March](https://www.military.africa/2026/03/terra-arms-duma-ugv-for-combat/)
that Terra had armed the Duma with machine guns and rocket launchers, and [Techpoint Africa noted](https://techpoint.africa/news/terras-drones-weapons-combat-ready/)
that the step marks a shift for a company that began by building surveillance-focused
drones and ground vehicles. [Ripples Nigeria](https://www.ripplesnigeria.com/nigerian-drone-startup-terra-builds-weaponized-uavs-and-ugvs-for-military-use/),
citing sources familiar with the work, described a classified programme with the
Nigerian military in which the weapons are operated remotely by military personnel,
while Terra’s Artemis OS software handles navigation. The timing matters. In February
Terra signed an agreement with the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON)
to form a [joint venture covering local assembly, research and training](https://www.military.africa/2026/03/terra-dicon-engineering-nigerias-autonomous-defence-future/)
under the DICON Act 2023, and its funding has since climbed from about $34 million
in March to roughly $52 million by August, as this site detailed in its analysis
of [the capital behind Africa’s drone boom](https://www.unmanned.africa/the-money-behind-africas-military-drone-boom/).

How far along the hardware actually is remains unclear. Military Africa said the
first batch of armed Duma units was expected to go through final field trials in
the middle of 2026, and nothing reviewed for this article confirms the results or
any delivery. Published specifications also differ. [defenceWeb’s profile](https://defenceweb.co.za/industry/industry-industry/new-ghana-facility-will-boost-startup-terra-industries-aerial-systems-production-to-50-000-annually/)
gives the Duma a weight of 350 kilograms, a 600-kilogram payload, 24-hour endurance
and a 10-kilometre control range, while Military Africa’s report on the armed version
cites about three and a half hours on a charge. The two figures may describe different
configurations, but neither source says so.

### How big is the market, really?

Market-sizing figures deserve care. The most-cited numbers for Africa’s UGV market
come from a single commercial publisher, [Next Move Strategy Consulting](https://www.nextmsc.com/report/africa-unmanned-ground-vehicle-market),
which values the market at $65.5 million in 2023 and projects $107.1 million by 
2030, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3 percent, with unit volumes rising
from 293 to 663, or 12.4 percent a year. The arithmetic holds together, and set 
against [published global estimates](https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/unmanned-ground-vehicles-ugv-market)
that mostly cluster around $4 billion to $4.5 billion for 2030, it would put Africa
at roughly 2 to 3 percent of the world market. But the public summary does not explain
how units were counted, and, as this site found when it examined the wider drone
market, analyst firms routinely disagree with one another by wide margins on African
defence figures.

One implication of the forecast is worth keeping. Volume is projected to grow far
faster than value, so the implied average price per unit falls by more than a quarter,
from roughly $224,000 to about $162,000. That is a derived figure, not one the publisher
reports, but it points toward growth driven by cheaper, smaller machines such as
throwable scouts and light bomb-disposal robots rather than armed tracked vehicles.
The Duma and the Anubis make the headlines. The volume, if the forecast is right,
will come from the unglamorous end of the market.

Part of the reason ground robots trail aerial drones is physical. A drone can fly
over a washed-out road, a river or a minefield, while a ground vehicle has to cross
all three, and sand, mud, rubble and heat punish tracks, motors and batteries in
ways that rarely trouble a quadcopter. The aerial drone boom also rode on a mass
commercial base of cheap cameras, motors and flight controllers that has no real
equivalent for rugged ground platforms. Both points are analysis rather than reported
fact, but they fit the pricing above: a robot that can survive a vehicle bomb or
tow a tonne costs far more than a quadcopter, and buyers on tight budgets have so
far tended to reach for the cheaper tool.

### What the public record does not show

Several claims that appear in industry summaries do not hold up against the available
reporting. One is that African armies routinely use UGVs as the lead element of 
convoys, driving ahead of manned vehicles to trigger roadside bombs, with Nigeria
and Somalia named as users. The logic is sound, and it is how makers pitch these
machines, but the documented cases are the Estonian patrols in Gao, the Libyan clearance
teams and Nigeria’s Bozena-5. Nothing in the reporting reviewed here describes routine
convoy-lead use in either country.

Another is that African rules of engagement universally require a human to authorise
lethal force. Some programmes do appear to keep a person in the loop, since the 
Duma’s weapons are reportedly operated remotely, but no continental standard is 
documented, and Military Africa’s own survey lists ethical concerns over armed autonomy
and vulnerability to jamming among the open problems. A ground robot steered over
a radio link faces the same electronic-warfare risks this site has covered for drones,
including in [Nigeria’s counter-drone build-up](https://www.unmanned.africa/nigerias-scramble-for-counter-drone-capability/),
where jammers have become a front-line tool.

### What to watch next

Two events will say more about this market in the coming weeks than any forecast.
The first is AFRIDEX, the inaugural [Africa International Defence Exhibition](https://www.afridex.com/),
which opens in Lagos on 26 October and is hosted by DICON. Terra Industries is on
the [exhibitor list](https://www.afridex.com/visit/why-visit/), and a public showing
of the armed Duma would be the first real test of whether March’s announcement has
hardware behind it. The second is whether Egypt’s Aqrab and Anubis move from the
exhibition floor into unit service.

If the drone story is any guide, the sequence is predictable: imports and demonstrations
first, licensed local assembly second, genuinely local designs last. Africa’s ground
robots sit somewhere between the first stage and the second. The difference between
them will be measured less in market forecasts than in who builds the parts that
go inside.

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