Peace and security in Africa took centre stage at this year’s Dakar International Forum.
The two-day event, held in Senegal from December 6 to 7, had in attendance prominent African leaders, senior officials, civilians, military experts, journalists and other delegates around the world.
This year’s event was centred on the challenges of Africa’s stability and emergence in a post-COVID world.
Since 2014, the Dakar Forum has continued to diagnose security challenges in Africa in order to contribute to the search for solutions to the ills affecting it.
The forum focuses on peace and security, with this year’s edition buttressing the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on peace and security and post-COVID recovery.
Senegal’s President Macky Sall opened this year’s forum, welcoming his colleagues from other countries including Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa), Mohamed Bazoum (Niger) and Umaro Sissoco Embalo (Guinea Bissau).
Others, including the President of the European Council Mr Charles Michel, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Mr Moussa Faki Mahamat and the Minister of the Armed Forces of the French Republic, Florence Parley, all spoke on their continued commitment to peace and security in Africa.
Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, chaired the plenary where discussions centred on post-COVID-19 phase, security and development, public health challenges, cyber security and the African continent.
Sall, on how COVID-19 pandemic had a severe blow on Africa’s economic growth, said: “The drastic drop in revenue and the unexpected increase in spending on health and socio-economic resilience have aggravated the budget deficit, while our countries do not have monetary and financial instruments to mitigate the impact of the crisis, as do the central banks of developed countries.
“This is compounded by the slowdown in external financial inflows, including foreign direct investment and remittances from the diaspora.
“As an illustration of the impact of the crisis, for the first time in its history, a country like Senegal has found itself transferring funds in the opposite direction, in support of our diaspora as part of our economic and social resilience plan.”
He noted that internal efforts must be made to mobilise resources and rethink global economic governance to favour the conditions for financing Africa’s emergence while he reiterated his support for South Africa at this trying times of Omicron.
Speaking on Security in Africa, Sall said: “Sahelian states must set up a military strategy adapted to the challenges of security, consisting of the use of techniques and means to make war the least asymmetric possible.
“On the subject of intelligence, the major mistake of the partners is their weak involvement in the fight against arms trafficking from Libya, which is the most important parameter in the prevalence of this terrorism.
“The Sahelian countries need exceptional financial resources, access to which requires a derogation from the traditional financing rules established by the international financial institutions, without which their actions will always be very inadequate.”
Sall further listed six focus areas of reform including relaxing OECD rules for export credit loans, and lengthening maturity dates for financing development infrastructure projects.
Others are correcting the rules for assessing investment risk in Africa since the perception of risk is still higher than the actual risk, which increases insurance premiums and reduces the competitiveness of our economies.
He called for the promotion of blended financing, combining concessional and commercial financing; ensuring a fair and equitable energy transition, according to the principle of common but differentiated responsibility.
The Senegalese president also spoke on the need to improve the rules of the international tax system so that taxes are paid where the wealth is created, i.e. in the country where a company operates and makes its profits.
Ramaphosa believes greed makes nations with more than enough to be stingy with vaccines.
He said: “They have said Omicron started from South Africa and so, our people can’t travel around the world, but today the same Omicron is all over their countries.”
He applauded the way four West African presidents accepted his visit amid Omicron.
“After Omicron was announced, I was due to travel to West Africa and in travelling in the wake of Omicron, I received calls from the four presidents of countries I was going to travel to: Senegal’s President Macky Sall, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and Cote d’Ivoire President Alessandro Ouattara.
They said: ‘we’ve heard about this Omicron, are you still coming? We want you to come, what can we do to help?”
He said upon hearing this, he reassured the four presidents he was coming and travelled to these countries with plenty of delegates and journalists without segregation, unlike his European counterparts who immediately banned South Africans from travelling into their countries after the news of Omicron broke.
On the issue of access to vaccines, he said a proposal has been made by the South African government, which is supported by over a hundred countries that will enable Africa to produce its vaccines using the youths as manpower.
Onyeama told journalists after the first day of the forum that the travel ban over Omicron will not work.
He said: “Travel bans will not work because some countries putting up these bans already have the Omicron variant in their countries and it doesn’t make a difference.
“The United Kingdom said the increasing number they got was what drove their decision on the travel ban on Nigerians.”
He said efforts are being made by the Nigerian government to get the country out of the United Kingdom’s red list.
“They have told us that they are very keen to remove Nigeria as quickly as possible from the red list and we are going to continue to work with them and encourage them to do that.”
On vaccine production, he said: “Having spoken to our medical people, Nigeria has the basic architecture in place to produce her own vaccine.”
When the minister was asked what Nigeria was doing to tackle the security challenges in the ECOWAS sub-region, he said: “In addressing the security challenges in the sub-region, Nigeria cannot do it alone and clearly it has to be something that is done within the sub-region as a group.
“Ecowas recently set up a peace and security fund where a sum of $1 billion will be raised, because too much reliance is placed on ECOWAS foreign partners as ECOWAS should be a lot more self-sufficient within our sub-region so as to address the security challenges we are facing in the Sub-region.”
Onyeama noted that Nigeria was the first country to contribute to the fund because it believes so much in the ECOWAS force and the idea of collective security, not neglecting the participation and activeness of Nigeria in a number of ECOWAS member states over the years in the area of security.
One of Nigeria’s delegates, Major General Usman Abdulmumuni Yusuf, the Director of Policy at Nigeria Defence Headquarters, while speaking with journalists on the issue of the prolonged battle with Boko Haram, said the Armed Forces of Nigeria were doing so much to contain insurgency.
He lauded their efforts so far, stating that the dynamics keep changing because of the ability of the insurgents to recruit from outside the borders and with different sources of financing which has kept them afloat.
Yusuf noted that Federal Government was doing a lot to curb the major financial sources of the terrorist groups, while the Armed Forces in collaboration with other security agencies are working along the borders to mitigate against the importation of other fighters from other countries into Nigeria.
