Obangame Express 2015: Two steps forward. One step back.

Adm Biekro, Ghana Navy Chief of Staff (Photo: US Navy) Dirk Steffen, Director of Maritime Security at Risk Intelligence, has written an article for Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) about this year’s OBANGAME EXPRESS exercise. Obangame Express is an annual maritime security exercise hosted by the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) with participation by Western and Central African states. This year it took place off the coasts of West African states between Côte d’Ivoire and Angola. Since its inception in 2011, the Obangame Express exercise has grown from involving only nine nations to involve 23 nations this year, including 12 Gulf of Guinea countries. Risk Intelligence’s Dirk Steffen observed this year’s Obangame Express exercise as part of his deployment with the German Navy. For CIMSEC, he explains how this year’s exercise was particularly interesting: it was the first exercise to rehearse and test the new structures and procedures provided by the recently ratified Yaoundé Code of Conduct. The Yaoundé Code of Conduct obliges Western and Central African member states to co-operate on preventing and prosecuting all forms of maritime crime and illicit activities at sea and share information between each other. By providing an information sharing and co-ordination structure, it should allow countries from ECOWAS and ECCAS to communicate multilaterally on maritime challenges. Obangame Express 2015 was a testing ground for the new interregional command, control and communications arrangements. Evaluating this in his article, Dirk Steffen describes how results, on a tactical level, were mixed: ranging from pleasant surprises to disappointments. Nonetheless, Dirk Steffen considers Obangame Express to be a valuable exercise in the sense that it offers an insight onto multiple aspects of maritime security operations in West Africa; their progress as well as the absence of it. Obangame Express provides an annual benchmark, registering and informing about change in any direction.