Broke South Sudan spends millions on Israeli surveillance drones

Cash-strapped South Sudan has spent millions of dollars on Israeli surveillance drones and security cameras aimed at fighting rampant crime in the capital Juba, officials say.

The first two drones and 11 cameras will be deployed by Israeli company Global Group, President Salva Kiir says at a launch event.

Criminals “can now be traced and they cannot get away with crime,” he says.

“All the planes at the airport will be safe. Everybody can be screened wherever he or she is going,” Kiir says, speaking at the drone control center at a police training center.

Edward Dimitiri, technology director at the interior ministry, would not put an exact price tag on the project, which he said was costing “millions of dollars.”

Since the outbreak of a fresh civil war four years ago, South Sudan’s oil-based economy has all but collapsed, further impoverishing an already poor population, while the ongoing conflict has uprooted a third of the population and pushed millions more to the brink of starvation.

— AFP