Kofi Ampeah Woode
The annual multinational maritime domain exercise which aims at building capacities of Navies in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) region to maintain a safe and secured maritime environment for socio-economic development – Exercise Obangame Express (OE23), has successfully closed its 12th edition.
The two-week training program commenced and closed in Lagos, Nigeria from 23 January to 3 February, 2023, and at a debriefing ceremony held at the Admiralty Conference Centre, Lagos, Nigeria, after the ships returned to harbour on February 4 2023, Commanders and Observers met to compare notes on areas of strengths, challenges and successes.
In brief comments, Nigeria’s Chief of the Naval Staff – Vice Admiral (V/Adm) Awwal Gambo and the Deputy Commander, United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) – Lieutenant General (Lt Gen) Kirk Smith, concurred that the exercise had been successful.
“The exercise debriefs exposed salient distinct points and critical observation, which are apt, relevant, and will remain valuable towards improving future exercises. The objectives of the exercise were achieved and therefore, a success” Admiral Gambo said.
“I very much appreciate the lessons learnt, the after-action report, as we call them, to go back and study for the future and how we collectively, together deal with the challenges and the problems presented to all of us”, General Smith said.
At a Digital Press Briefing on OE23, monitored by Peace Journal, Rear Admiral (R/Adm) Chase Patrick – Director of Maritime Headquarters, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, at the U.S. Sixth Fleet said his forces are committed to being a reliable and long-term partner in what he called ‘Atlantic Africa’, believing that the safety and security in the waters surrounding Africa, are critical to maintaining a stable and safe global environment.
Sharing some of the accomplishments of OE23, Admiral Patrick said, recognizing that exchanging ship-boarding techniques is not enough to combat transnational maritime crimes, several training opportunities for maritime and police forces to practice and demonstrate the proper collection and reporting of evidence were included, such as judicial prosecution, which helps to close the loop on all the hard work that is being done at sea by boarding teams.
“We had personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement team, as well as U.S. Army Special Forces, work together with our partners on comply and entry measures, and also had support from other agencies such as Interpol, who provided training on database prosecution techniques”, he added.
Some key lessons shared at the debriefings include; 1) Increase in Zonal and Cross-zonal scenarios to stress the Yaoundé Architecture, 2) Need to increase the level of realism into scenarios and to move away from scripted timelines to more dynamic injects, 3) Increase women’s Peace and Security aspects into the scenarios:
Others are; 4) Utilize a pending Task force Command and Control structure developed by an African Union initiative to execute a table-top exercise during OE24, and 5) Optimize utilization of available funding to accomplish desired training objectives.
33 nations participated in this year’s Obangame Express which is sponsored by USAFRICOM and facilitated by U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, which also has all Africa partnership station exercises in West, North and East Africa, which includes Obangame, Phoenix, and Cutlass Express – three African regional “Express” series exercises.
By Kofi Ampeah-Woode
