By Suleiman Muhammadu
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in April 1949 with the signing of the Washington Treaty by countries from North America and Europe. Its founding member countries are Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (U.S.).
Today the alliance has 32 member countries from North America and Europe. Sweden is the newest member of NATO. It joined the alliance as its 32nd member in March 2024 in response to Russia’s ‘’military operation’’ in Ukraine. NATO is the first peacetime military alliance the US joined outside the Western hemisphere with its Alliance headquarters in Brussels, capital of Belgium.
The combined militaries of all NATO members reportedly approximate 3.5 million soldiers and personnel, and its combined military spending constitute over half of the global total. The principle of collective defense is at the heart of NATO’s founding treaty. It remains a unique and enduring principle that binds its members together, originally committing them to protect each other and setting a spirit of solidarity within the Alliance to deter Soviet aggression at the time.
But in recent years, the Southern frontier has gained new salience with NATO’s expanding military activities in Africa through its military exercises, maritime patrols, and technical partnerships. They reflect not only regional security needs, but also a shifting global order in which Africa is a growing arena of strategic competition. Following its controversial intervention in Libya in 2011, NATO’s first combat operation on African soil, the Alliance pivoted towards less kinetic approach: training, capacity building, and strategic coordination with African partners.
Today NATO works closely with the African Union (AU), provides support for maritime security in the Mediterranean and West Africa, and backs military exercises that include African participants. In 2023 and 2024, NATO hosted joint training workshops with the AU and the United Nations, (UN) on peace operations, standardizing doctrines, and exploring scalable African-led responses to crises. All were purportedly aimed at securing Africa’s security architecture.
Africa, for NATO represents both an emerging threat landscape and a geostrategic opportunity. Rising terrorist violence, irregular migration flows, maritime security and growing Chinese influence have elevated African profile within NATO circles. The Alliance’s military planners now consider the security of the Sahel, Gulf of Guinea, and the Red Sea corridor as essential to European stability. Because their security would serve as a hedge against both strategic surprise and slow burning instability.
Already NATO’s activities span several countries in Africa. Morocco, a long time NATO partner regularly participates in NATO-backed military exercises such as African Lion, which in 2025 reportedly involved over 10,000 troops from NATO countries and African partners including Ghana, Tunisia, and Senegal. Tunisia received NATO’s assistance in counter terrorism and border control, especially after terrorist attacks in 2015. Algeria, though officially no-aligned, has reportedly engaged in limited intelligence sharing on counter terrorism and maritime security
The Gulf of Guinea increasingly becoming a piracy and coastal trafficking zone, is now being viewed through a NATO lens as an extension of Atlantic security. Through Operation Sea Guardian, NATO maintains persistent presence in the Mediterranean Sea, tasked with counterterrorism, intelligence- gathering, and deterring human trafficking. But NATO’s expanding African footprint intersect with US African Command (AFRICOM), which remains the continent’s primarily Western military actor. With its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, AFRICOM carries out combat operations, drone strikes, training missions and capacity building across sub-Saharan Africa. AFRICOM has legal and logistical mechanisms to operate in places like Niger, Somalia, and Mali unlike NATO.
But the constitutional overlap of NATO and AFRICOM is real. Defense experts say that many AFRICOM officers are NATO veterans and NATO’s interoperability standards underpin much of the U.S. training provided to African militaries. In NATO’s Association of African Air Forces (AAAF) backed by U.S. and NATO allies, has become a key venue for dialogue among African Air Chiefs.
The 2025 symposium in Lusaka, Zambia, emphasized Intelligence, Surveillance, and reconnaissance, (ISR) capabilities, disaster response, and officer corps development – areas where NATO expertise complements AFRICOM operations. African governments sometimes struggle to distinguish between NATO programs and bilateral U.S. or European initiatives. Analysts point out that this duplication and blurred mandates can not bolster Atlantic security without NATO not becoming entangled in neocolonial entrapments. And African countries may lose their sovereignty in the process of NATO’s search for its security in Africa.
There is growing concern that NATO’s model – military first, elite-driven, technocratic is often a poor fit for Africa’s hybrid conflicts, where governance failure, poverty, and environmental stress are key drivers.
Africa is no more a humanitarian concern for NATO but now a theater of competition with renewed great power rivalry. NATO leaders recently gathered in The Hague and committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defense by 2035.NATO’s militarization push arrives at a time Africa is grappling with terrorist insurgencies in the Sahel to civil wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo alongside the economic aftershocks of climate change and pandemic recovery. NATO’s spending surge triggers an arms race, African governments may have to face the choice of aligning with one power bloc or another, and struggle to maintain neutrality amid escalating great power competition.
The economic implications are equally daunting as many African economies depend on foreign aid for healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Such critical programs could face cuts if European nations redirect budgets from development assistance to fighter jets and missile systems. African leaders may be pressured to increase their own military spending at the expense of social services. NATO’s 5% pledge signals that the Alliance is preparing for confrontation, not cooperation. The African Union’s calls for ‘’African solutions to African problems’’ will be drowned in the noise of great power posturing as it may be pushed into another era of division and dependency.
Suleiman Mohammadu writes from Kano
