Cabo Verde hosts first African Maritime Forces Summit
The first-of-its-kind African Maritime Forces Summit (AMFS), which is taking place this week in Sal Island, Cabo Verde, brings together African maritime officials and their international counterparts to debate ways to improve maritime security in African waterways.
The Senior Leadership Symposium has reportedly replaced the three yearly exercise-related Senior Leadership Symposia as the largest maritime security-focused conference in Africa (SLSs).
African countries taking part in this inaugural event are Angola, Benin, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, and Tunisia. Participants come from four continents, including Africa, Europe, North America, and South America, and include leaders of navies, coast guards, and naval infantries.
AMFS is expected to become an annual event. “AMFS is a new model for African senior leadership engagement, which combines the three senior leadership symposiums traditionally held during NAVAF’s annual regional express-series exercises into a single continent-wide event,” said a US Naval Forces Europe-Africa (NAVEUR-NAVAF)/US Sixth Fleet statement on 19 March.
Read Also: Maritime Stakeholders Praise Nigerian Navy For Helping Agencies Work Together
Previously, the Express series of military exercises— Obangame Express and Cutlass Express—would have senior leadership symposiums as a part of the agenda. With AMFS, rather than have three regional, leadership symposiums built inside each exercise’s programming, it is now a single, combined, continent-wide Summit for improved interaction and exchange among chiefs of navies and coast guard infantry leaders, in one room, from across Africa.
The location of Cabo Verde is notable because the country is at the crossroads of West Africa, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and has the facilities to co-host with NAVEUR-NAVAF, simplifying the participation of, “key allies and partners with interest in the region, including Brazil, France, India, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom,” and the United States of America.
The top brass of US President Joseph Biden’s defense officials traveling to Africa to attend AMFS includes US Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, the commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, commander of US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, Admiral Stuart B Munsch, US Africa Command’s deputy to the commander for Civil-Military Engagement, Ambassador Andrew Young, and senior United States Agency for International Development (USAID) leadership.
Cabo Verde hosts first African Maritime Forces Summit
