Southern African countries plan joint counter-terrorism strategy

A Southern Africa counter- terrorism strategy will be presented to regional state governments for adoption, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has said.

A three-day workshop launched Wednesday on the development of the strategy is underway in Botswana's capital city of Gaborone.

The regional and national counter-terrorism strategies have not been prioritized until recently as historically the terrorism threat to the regional is low, said Botswana's Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration Eric Molale when opening the workshop.

"Recent developments have shown that Southern Africa is not immune to terrorist activities," he said.

The experts from the United Nations, African Union and SADC and its 15 member states will work on finalizing the text of the draft strategy as well as on developing a plan of action to implement it.

Subsequently the finalized draft strategy will be presented to SADC member state governments for adoption, according to SADC.

The workshop is the last in a series of three, before which two workshops were held in last November in Zimbabwe and in March 2015 in Zambia respectively. Endi