25 Aug 2015

Senior military officers from different countries are in Gaborone on an annual communications and information exercise dubbed Africa Endeavor.

Hosted by the Botswana Defence Force in partnership with the US Africa Command, the communications seminar seeks to enable military leaders to review and analyse the current abilities of their forces to communicate during multinational operations.

It also seeks to develop standardised training and procedures to improve future support.

Speaking at the opening of the exercise on Monday August 24, Major General Gotsileene Morake said communications was very important within an army and between armies.

He said todays’ militaries were often called on to work together on common security challenges that were enabled by communications, adding that in this kind of interconnected environment, communications played a critical role.

“It therefore goes without saying that we need to work together to create stronger and more resilient and more cohesive militaries that can respond collectively to global security challenges before us, enabled by communications,” he said.

Further, Maj. Gen. Morake said in the past decades, many countries had improved their ability to mitigate and respond to the effects of calamities which tended to overwhelm domestic capacities.

He thus noted that it was a fact that recent disasters which struck some African countries had shown that no nation could reasonably consider itself immune from the occasional need for international assistance.

Therefore, the army chief said to address such eventualities, the US Africa Command, through Africa Endeavor sought to build the capacity of African nations to exchange information through compatible communications networks.

He said the networks would not only facilitate communication on the continent, but also form a basis for collaborative links with the UN, US, AU and other international partners.

For his part, US Ambassador to Botswana Mr Earl Miller said Africa Endeavor presented a unique opportunity to discuss communication challenges, share ideas, and work to increase interoperability between security forces and with civilian colleagues.

Mr Miller said the future of military operations would be joint and multinational, while currently, excluding the on-going AU missions, there are 16 UN missions of four continents, involving 122 countries contributing military, police and civilian personnel. 

Meanwhile, US Army, Col. Patrick Dedham said communications was a key enabler for successful integration of multi-national African forces in any exercise or operation.

He said every commander, whether conducting security operations or responding to a crisis, relied on effective and timely communications to make decisions . ENDS