Africa’s scary new age of high-tech warfare

Once infamous for fighting on horseback and ransacking villages like medieval raiders, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) recently acquired the weapons of 21st-century war. In early May the Sudanese militia, which has been fighting the country’s army since April 2023, launched drone strikes on Port Sudan, an army stronghold on the Red Sea coast. The attack damaged Sudan’s only functioning airport and the city’s main power station. Yet its most enduring impact was psychological. More than 1,000 kilometres away from any known RSF base, Port Sudan was long considered safe. The RSF’s drones demolished that assumption.