East African countries grew their defense budgets at a faster pace than the continent’s average last year, as regional armies deepened their arms build-up in the face of new terrorism threats from groups like the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), which researches on conflict and arms control across the world, said.

Tanzania  increased its defense budget the most by 34.4 percent to $380 million, while Kenya increased its defense budget by 20 percent to $861 million. Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi increased their allocations to the military by 10.8 percent, 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent resprectively. These increases were all above the Africa’s mean military budget which rose 8.3 percent to $44.9 billion.

Reasons for the increased budget, Sipri says, include competition for regional military superiority and threats from Somalia where the region’s armies are fighting Al-Shabaab under the African Mission in Somalia (Amisom).

“Spending depends on the need to meet security challenges such as for peacekeeping in Somalia,” Samuel Perlo-Freeman, Sipri military expenditure program director told the Business Daily in an e-mail response.

According to Global Firepower, a website that asses the military strength of nations, Kenya, which has the strongest army in the region, ranks at position six on the continent behind Egypt, Algeria, Ethiopia, South Africa and Nigeria. But on defense budgets Kenya has the eighth largest budget excluding Libya which was not ranked last year.

Overall, Africa’s spending on its army rose the highest globally last year — 8.3 per cent to $44.9 billion – which accounted for 2.5 percent of the total global expenditure of $1.75 trillion. The study Sipri showed that global military expenditure fell 1.9 per cent last year, the second drop in a row.