The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

If Africa learns one lesson from the rest of the world, when it comes to American drones it should be that poor, developing countries do not get much of a choice about whether their airspace is invaded by the unmanned killers.

Mali has only just asked America to help to rout the Islamist militants from its northern hinterland — six months after a coup pushed an area the size of France into a deadly power vacuum — but there is anecdotal evidence that the planes were there already.

At least seven people died in June when a convoy linked to the Yahya Abou al-Hammam brigade was bombed, roughly 200km north of Timbuktu. If the plane that killed them was indeed American, then it might well have taken off from Nouakchott, in neighbouring Mauritania, or Ougadougou in neighbouring Burkina Faso. Both cities, according to US reports, have hosted PC12 surveillance planes, used to monitor al-Qaeda-linked groups across the Sahel. Both countries are proof of another truth about drones: once a country starts hosting them, the planes are never confined to that airspace.