Nairobi, July 8 -- Kenya became Africa's second-largest importer of major arms in 2025, reflecting the country's growing investment in national security amid rising regional instability and modernisation of its defence forces.

Kenya imported 117 million Trend-Indicator Value (TIV) worth of major conventional arms in 2025, a more than six-fold increase from 19 million TIV recorded in 2024, according to data from Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), an independent global security think tank.

A TIV is a unique unit developed by SIPRI to measure the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons. Instead of using financial costs, it assigns a common numerical value to weapons based on their...