South African defence tycoon Ivor Ichikowitz backs local arms

Ivor Ichikowitz, the South African industrialist who founded the defence manufacturer Paramount Group, has argued that African countries should stop buying their weapons abroad and build their own.

Writing in New African magazine on Sept. 20, ahead of the United Nations General Assembly, he said foreign powers were arming proxies on African soil and that security arranged through outside partners collapses whenever priorities shift in Washington, Moscow, Paris or Abu Dhabi.

His case draws on a survey his own foundation commissioned. The 2026 African Youth Survey interviewed 4,901 people aged 18 to 24 in sixteen countries, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Somalia, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Asked to name the biggest threat to safety in their communities, 54% of respondents said unemployment and poverty rather than terrorism or invasion. Asked what governments should prioritise to improve security, 56% chose job creation for young people, against 35% for military investment. Only 29% wanted international partners to put military and security support first; more wanted infrastructure, investment and technology transfer.

They are not unconcerned about security. Seventy per cent said they feel safe in their own country, but 78% worried about armed groups crossing borders, 79% about weapons and drug smuggling and 80% about human trafficking.

Ichikowitz argues that manufacturing defence equipment at home answers both concerns. It would let African armies maintain and adapt their own equipment without waiting for a foreign patron’s permission, he wrote, and create the engineering, electronics, software and manufacturing jobs young Africans are asking for.

Paramount, which he founded in 1994, makes armoured vehicles and aircraft. Ichikowitz wrote that he has spent more than three decades proving African engineers can design and build aircraft, armoured vehicles and unmanned systems that compete with anything in the world, and that partner nations can manufacture them on their own soil. He did not name the company in the article.

Drone attacks by JNIM, the jihadist coalition operating across the Sahel, rose from fewer than 10 in 2024 to about 80 in 2025, he wrote, and researchers have counted more than 900 drone strikes across 15 African countries. He pointed to El Fasher in Sudan, which fell in October 2025 after an 18-month siege, with the United Nations documenting more than 6,000 killings in the first three days.

He called for regional standardisation of equipment, pooled purchasing and shared military training academies, arguing that no single African state can afford to master counter-drone defence and AI-assisted intelligence on its own.

He held up Rwanda, where 99% of young people told the survey they feel safe, as the example of a state that treats its citizens’ safety as the foundation for investment and jobs.

Ichikowitz also chairs the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which runs the survey alongside the African Oral History Archive.