The global arms trade has grown by 16% over the past decade, with military hardware including tanks, missiles and artillery flowing to African countries faster than to any other region, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

African governments and rebel groups imported 45% more weapons in 2014 than in 2005, Sipri reported in its latest arms transfers database. Weapons sales to the Asia and Oceania region grew by 37% over the same period, while the Middle East bought 25% more weapons.

Sipri’s data, which accounts for purchases of military hardware including tanks, aircraft, radar, artillery, rockets, missiles and ships, is measured over five-year periods because weapons orders can fluctuate significantly from year to year.

Violence and destruction associated with rising arms imports into Africa costs the continent an estimated $18bn (£12.1bn) a year as infrastructure is destroyed, businesses are closed and children are kept out of school, said Martin Butcher, arms policy adviser at Oxfam. “Burundi spends an average of $5 a year on healthcare for each citizen, but the cost of treating a victim of armed violence in Burundi averages $165 a year,” Butcher explained.

The leading African importers of military hardware were Algeria, Morocco and Sudan. Many countries used soaring oil revenues to buy weapons, but a sharp drop in the price of oil has cast doubts on their ability to continue heightened defence spending.

Driving arms purchases in the continent is Algeria’s long-standing rivalry with Morocco and Uganda’s involvement in South Sudan’s civil war, according to Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at Sipri. Cameroon and Nigeria showed “urgent demand” for weapons in their fight against Islamist rebel group Boko Haram, Sipri said. The involvement of Uganda, Ghana and Kenya in military operations mandated by the African Union and the UN also contributed to a rise in arms imports.

“Competitive acquisition plays some role in [rising arms sales to Africa], but concerns over domestic insurgencies are becoming increasingly important in shaping what the military buys,” said Malcolm Chalmers, director of UK defence policy at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

But Sipri is not able to include imports of small arms – widely used in civil wars such as those in South Sudan, Central African Republic and Somalia – in its data. “We do recognise the importance of small arms imports, especially in a region like Africa, where major arms are not so widely available. Alas, we cannot record them in the way we would like to,” Wezeman said, noting the limited transparency of military spending as another impediment to the accuracy of Sipri’s data.

Russia sold the most arms to African countries, mainly to Algeria, while France’s sales to Morocco made it the second-largest arms dealer to the continent.

Worldwide, the biggest arms exporters were the US and Russia, which accounted for more than half of all weapons sales between 2010 and 2014, the data showed. China’s arms sales have soared by 143% since 2005, making it the world’s third largest arms dealer. In contrast, Europe’s arms exports fell by 16%.

Wezeman played down the link between rising African arms imports and China’s soaring arms exports. “Chinese arms exports are still very much going to a small number of states – mainly Pakistan followed by [Burma] and Bangladesh,” he said.

The biggest importers of US arms were South Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Australia. Russia sent the bulk of its arms shipments to India, China and Algeria.

India imported the most arms between 2010 and 2014, followed by Saudi Arabia, China, the UAE and Pakistan. These five countries accounted for 33% of all arms imports over the period, Sipri said.

Sipri takes the production costs of a set of commonly used weapons and analyses arms deals to calculate the “transfer of military capability”, Wezeman said. “We do not look at the financial value that has been agreed between the recipient and the supplier … because quite often weapons are transferred for no price at all.”

The institute estimated the value of the world’s arms trade in 2007 at more than $50bn, with the US selling $12.8bn of weapons, making it the leading global exporter. Russia ranked second, with $7.4bn in arms sales, followed by France with $6.2bn, Israel with $4.4bn and the UK with $4.1bn.

“The US has long seen arms exports as a major foreign policy and security tool, but in recent years exports are increasingly needed to help the US arms industry maintain production levels at a time of decreasing US military expenditure,” said Aude Fleurant, director of Sipri’s arms and military expenditure programme.