South Sudan vs. Ethiopia
Military
| South Sudan | Ethiopia | |
|---|---|---|
| Military branches | South Sudan People's Defence Force (SSPDF): Ground Force (includes Presidential Guard), Air Force, Air Defense Forces (2021) | Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF): Ground Forces, Ethiopian Air Force (Ye Ityopya Ayer Hayl, ETAF) (2020) note(s): in January 2020 the Ethiopian Government announced it had re-established a navy, which was disbanded in 1996; in March 2019 Ethiopia signed a defense cooperation agreement with France which stipulated that France would support the establishment of an Ethiopian navy, which will reportedly be based out of Djibouti in 2018, Ethiopia established a Republican Guard for protecting senior officials; the Republican Guard is a military unit accountable to the Prime Minister |
| Military service age and obligation | 18 is the legal minimum age for compulsory and voluntary military service; the Government of South Sudan signed agreements in March 2012 and August 2015 that included the demobilization of all child soldiers within the armed forces and opposition, but the recruitment of child soldiers by the warring parties continues; as of July 2019, UNICEF estimated that more than 19,000 child soldiers had been used in the country's civil war since it began in December 2013 (2019) | 18 years of age for voluntary military service; no compulsory military service, but the military can conduct callups when necessary and compliance is compulsory (2019) |
| Military expenditures - percent of GDP | 3.5% of GDP (2019 est.) 3.7% of GDP (2018 est.) 2.8% of GDP (2017 est.) 4.6% of GDP (2016 est.) 10.6% of GDP (2015 est.) | 0.7% of GDP (2019 est.) 0.7% of GDP (2018 est.) 0.7% of GDP (2017 est.) 0.7% of GDP (2016 est.) 0.7% of GDP (2015 est.) |
| Military - note | the South Sudan People's Defense Force (SSPDF), formerly the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), was founded as a guerrilla movement against the Sudanese Government in 1983 and participated in the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005); the Juba Declaration that followed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 unified the SPLA and the South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF), the second-largest rebel militia remaining from the civil war, under the SPLA name; in 2017, the SPLA was renamed the South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF) and in September 2018 was renamed again as the SSPDF under the September 2018 peace agreement, all armed groups in South Sudan were to assemble at designated sites where fighters could be either disarmed and demobilized, or integrated into unified military and police forces; the unified forces were then to be retrained and deployed prior to the formation of a national unity government; all fighters were ordered to these sites in July 2019; some progress toward merging the various armed forces into a national army has been made; for example, in May 2020, South Sudan announced that it was graduating some unified forces at various training centers across the country, and in June the SSPDF incorporated some senior officers from the main opposition force, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement Army - in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) into its rank structure; nevertheless, overall progress has been slow, and as of early 2021 armed clashes continued to occur between government forces and armed militant groups in several states the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has operated in the country since 2011 with the objectives of consolidating peace and security and helping establish conditions for the successful economic and political development of South Sudan; UNMISS had more than 19,000 personnel, including about 14,000 troops, deployed in the country as of March 2021 United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) has operated in the disputed Abyei region along the border between Sudan and South Sudan since 2011; UNISFA's mission includes ensuring security, protecting civilians, strengthening the capacity of the Abyei Police Service, de-mining, monitoring/verifying the redeployment of armed forces from the area, and facilitating the flow of humanitarian aid; as of July 2021, UNISFA had some 3,800 personnel deployed | each of the nine states has a regional and/or a "special" paramilitary security forces that report to regional civilian authorities; local militias operate across the country in loose and varying coordination with these regional security and police forces, the Ethiopian Federal Police (EFP), and the Ethiopian military; the EFP reports to the Ministry of Peace, which was created in October of 2018
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| Military and security service personnel strengths | the South Sudan People's Defense Force (SSPDF) has an estimated 150-200,000 active personnel, mostly ground forces with small contingents of air and riverine forces (2021) note - some active SSPDF personnel may be militia | information varies; approximately 150,000 active duty troops, including about 3,000 Air Force personnel (no personnel numbers available for the newly-established Navy) (2020) |
| Military equipment inventories and acquisitions | the SSPDF inventory is primarily of Soviet origin; from 2010 to 2015, Russia and the United Arab Emirates were the leading suppliers of arms and equipment; South Sudan has been under a UN arms embargo since 2018 (2020) | the ENDF's inventory is comprised mostly of Soviet-era equipment from the 1970s; since 2010, Russia and Ukraine are the leading suppliers of largely second-hand weapons and equipment to the ENDF, followed by China and Hungary; Ethiopia has a modest industrial defense base centered on small arms and production of armored vehicles (2020) |
Source: CIA Factbook
