EU commits US$430 million for security, peace building in Africa

31 Octobre 2017

Abuja, Nigeria, October 31 (Infosplusgabon) - The European Union (EU) Tuesday announced that it is spending a total of US$430 million for security and peace building in Africa for the period 2014 to 2020.

Mr Richard Young, the EU Deputy Head of Delegation in Nigeria, announced the figures in Abuja at the Peace and Security conference jointly organised by the EU and the African Union (AU).

The conference is holding to address key issues at the forthcoming AU Summit scheduled for Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire, from 29-30 November 2017 and is exploring strategies that will promote peace and security in Africa.

Mr Young said at the Abuja preparatory conference that "Africa experiences quite a number of complex security challenges and these security challenges are intertwined with the European Union's own security in different ways.

The connections between Libya and the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf, between maritime security and coastal communities are all evident in this respect. Both the African Union and the European Union are responding to these challenges and the AU-EU summit in Abidjan will provide opportunity to ensure responses, reinforce and complement each other and provide durable solution to the continent of Africa.

"The theme for the conference, "Investing in Youth for a Sustainable Future ", will be tackled from a variety of perspectives of governance, investment, energy and migration. Stakeholders would also outline the African continental and regional peace and security strategies stemming notably from the Africa's 2063 agenda as well as the European Union's strategy setting out its global strategy.

"There are a number of issues dear to the people, issues of migration, conflicts and youth inclusion in governance, stakeholders say there is also the need they say to look at the preventive side of peace and security practices and interventions in Africa with focus on proximate and immediate causes of conflict.”

Dr Oshita Oshita, Director General of Nigeria’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution, said the conference was key to identifying security issues and plans to address them.

John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, noted that with the "conference as well as the summit in Abidjan, there is an opportunity to reaffirm commitments already made but to learn from the past experiences, explore and identify new actions that could address the recurring and ever evolving challenges of promoting peace security in the continent of Africa and Europe."

Government officials, private sector practitioners, policy makers, youths, Non-Governmental Organisations and others attended the conference.

FIN/INFOSPLUSGABON/POL/GABON 2017

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