Military Spending and Natural Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa

The aim of this paper is to identify the impact of natural resources dependence on military spending in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In the first part we compare the positions on the impact of high military spending on economic growth and development identified by authors studying this field that can be either positive or negative. In the second part we analyse the relation between the share of natural resources in total export and various indicators of military spending from SIPRI database using regression analysis. The model also contains other factors influencing the level of military spending in the country, e. g. regional instability, internal fragmentation, etc. The article examines not only how the natural resources dependence influences military spending but also if this spending has positive or negative effect on the development in these economies.