Strong only on paper? Fact-checking Angie Motshekga's claim about South Africa's military might
- The Global Firepower website did rank South Africa's military third in Africa in 2024 but it's unclear how this was calculated, though the website claims it includes factors such as the number of soldiers and a country's finances.
- Not only can the website's ranking not be independently checked, there are also no signs of who owns the website or what their credentials are.
- Military experts told Africa Check that such statistics don't assess combat readiness or the quality of a military force's training, logistics, and combat experience.
In March 2025, the Southern African Development Community said it would start gradually pulling troops out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Soldiers from the bloc were sent to eastern DRC in 2023 to help stabilise the conflict-hit region. But after 14 South African troops died in January 2025, the country's defence minister Angie Motshekga faced heavy criticism and questions about the army's competence.
Amid the uproar, Motshekga said in February that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) was "a force to be reckoned with", claiming that in a recent ranking of the continent's defence forces, it came third after Egypt and Algeria.
Is this accurate?
Motshekga said her claim came from a "recent report", but didn't say which. Africa Check has asked the ministry for the source and will update this report with their response.
The minister likely quoted Global Firepower, a website that ranks countries by "military strength". It ranked South Africa third in Africa in 2024, after Egypt and Algeria, and fourth in 2025.
The site says it uses a "unique, in-house formula" to create a "PowerIndex" based on "over 60 individual factors". These include the number of soldiers, military vehicles and a country's finances. It also says it collects data from various sources which may "deliver varying degrees of information and/or accuracy".
But there are some problems with this system.
The site doesn't explain how it calculates an overall score, so the rankings can't be independently checked. While it lists the factors used, it doesn't say how these are then turned into a final ranking for the 145 countries it tracks. Out of 55 African Union member states, it includes just 37.
The website does not list any contact details, so Africa Check couldn't ask the site's owners about their methods.
The site's author isn't named, and there are no signs that experts are behind it. In the past, a disclaimer read: "This is a personal and experimental site meant for entertainment and to stir up dialogue."
A similar disclaimer now reads: "Material presented throughout this website is for entertainment and historical value as well as a general reference."
All this hasn't stopped major news outlets - and at least one government minister - from quoting the ranking without question.
We asked several defence experts about Global Firepower's index.
A key concern raised by experts at Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Military Science in South Africa was that simply listing stats didn't necessarily reflect how "strong" one country's military was compared to another.
"Adding up weapons and personnel numbers to compare sizes is a bit different than assessing combat readiness for missions," Dr Francois Vreÿ, an emeritus professor of military science at the university, told Africa Check.
Dr Thomas Mandrup, an associate professor at Stellenbosch and head of research at the Royal Danish Defence College's Institute for Strategy and War Studies, said that the index didn't reflect the SANDF's true strength and that "a number of the values are wrong", including troop numbers.
Defence analyst Helmoed Heitman said that some equipment numbers "were simply wrong" and that the site seemed to "simply list equipment that has been acquired at some point", without factoring in upgrades or wear over time.
Experts agreed that numbers alone didn't show real military strength. To compare countries, you also need to consider factors like the quality of training, logistics and combat experience.
Ignoring these factors was "a fatal mistake", said Darren Olivier, director of military news and analysis site African Defence Review, whose post on X criticising the ranking initially drew our attention to the claim. "There are many examples in history of a military better in qualitative terms, having excellent training, discipline, and highly effective integration between its forces being able to pull off big victories against armed forces that are much larger in both personnel and equipment levels."
Olivier also criticised Global Firepower's unclear methods, shallow comparative analysis and focus on ranking, saying it shouldn't be taken seriously.
"It was frankly surprising to see South Africa's minister of defence uncritically quoting it," he said.
Other experts said trying to rank a country's military overall wasn't very useful. Annette Seegers, emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town's politics department, said such rankings simply "do not reveal effectiveness".
Olivier said that some armies were trained and equipped for specific environments or tasks so it wasn't as simple as ranking countries by "strength". One army might be more effective in one situation but not in another, depending on the conditions.
There are other, more nuanced ways of measuring a military's effectiveness. The Military Balance by the International Institute for Security Studies gives yearly insights into 170 countries' forces, conflict zones, political and economic dynamics, and more.
However, defence expert Heitman noted that even these had limits. The IISS reports, for example, "cannot always be sure of how much equipment is properly serviceable, and also do not have a good insight into training levels and standards".
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While an outright ranking might not be possible, experts told Africa Check we still know a lot about the state of South Africa's defence force.
They identified several issues hurting the SANDF, including budget cuts, poor equipment maintenance and the quality of its training programmes.
"As has been clear for some time, decades of prolonged underfunding have had a severe impact on the SANDF in both a quantitative and qualitative sense," Olivier said.
The Department of Defence's annual reports show that the number of SANDF members dropped from almost 80,000 in 2013/14 to just below 70,000 ten years later. Olivier's opinion is that "in virtually every metric, the SANDF is less combat-capable today than it was a decade ago".
Heitman echoed these sentiments. He said "very good and even outstanding people" in the SANDF were often unable to do their jobs effectively because they'd been poorly assigned and lacked the necessary equipment or funding.
Depending on what was measured, he suggested South Africa might come off unfavourably compared to some other African countries.
"Bottom line," Heitman said, was that "despite having good people, the SANDF is not currently fit for purpose".
