African defense colleges seek close cooperation

A meeting of Commandants of Defense colleges and training managers of defense forces from several African countries opened in Kigali Wednesday with participants expected to explore ways of developing cooperation.

The 10th annual African Conference of Commandants of Staff Colleges (ACOC) was organized under the theme: Educating lessons learnt from contemporary African conflicts."

It drew about 40 delegates from different African countries.

It seeks to contribute to African security through quality education and developing cooperation among African Command and Staff Colleges through benchmarking college curriculum best practices, directing staff exchange programs and combined joint African exercise, according to organizers.

In his opening remarks, Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba, Chief of Defense Staff of the Rwanda Defense Forces stressed the importance of interoperability among the different African military colleges in professionalizing forces.

The meeting will be centered on educating lessons learnt from the contemporary African conflicts and crises.

Nyamvumba also stressed the importance of working together to eliminate security threats on the continent.

He pointed out that the scope, impact and complexity of security challenges require concerted efforts to find workable solutions and undertaking meaningful steps in actualizing them through preventive, proactive and where possible reactive bold actions.

"It is important to promote dialogue between African countries and other partner states with a view to designing strategies that can improve regional and continental security initiatives rather than focusing on individual state capacities," he said.

ACOC was established in 2007 in Pretoria, South Africa by several pioneering African military colleges to bring together commandants of the defense colleges as well as training managers of African defense forces. Endit