Gulf of Guinea Security Centre imminent

The Inter-regional Working Group is drafting the organisational documents in Yaounde.

Experts of the Inter-regional Working Group in charge of drafting the organisational documents of the Inter-regional Coordination Centre for the implementation of the regional strategy for maritime safety and security in West and Central Africa, have intensified work in Yaounde in view of working on the documents.

They started meeting at the Yaounde Mont Fébé Hotel on April 22 within the framework of their first five-day working session. Yesterday, April 23, they continued work behind closed doors. The creation of the Inter-regional Coordination Centre is contained in Article 5 of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by heads of the Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS, Economic Community of West African State, ECOWAS and the Gulf of Guinea Commission, GGC, at the end of the Gulf of Heads of State Gulf of Guinea maritime safety and security summit in Yaounde, Cameroon on June 24 to 15, 2013.

The headquarters of the Inter-regional Coordination Centre is Yaounde. When the Centre finally goes operational it will help to better achieve cooperation among the regional ECCAS, ECOWAS and GGC maritime centres with the ultimate objective to promote synergy through the pooling and interoperability of community resources.

The Inter-regional Working Group was set up in Dakar, Senegal on October 25, 2013 with the mission to draw up the tools for the envisaged cooperation. The experts are specifically working on the internal rules and regulations of the Annual Meeting of senior officials of ECCAS, ECOWAS and GGC which is the structure to ensure the orientation, follow up and evaluation of regional cooperation; headquarters agreement and basic texts of the Centre.

They are also working on the roadmap and plan of action for 2014 to 2016 to put in place regional maritime strategy as well as enable the Inter-regional Coordination Centre gain full force; funding plan of the strategy; terms of reference of the conference of partners and other third party contributors and the communication strategy. The Coordinator of the Inter-regional Working Group, Colonel Abdourahmane Dieng presented the level of advancement of their work and perspectives of the Inter-regional Coordination Centre to go operational.