The focus of the African Partnership Station (APS) this year is vital to the professional development and response capabilities of the navies across the sub-region.
The APS is an international maritime safety and security initiative that enhances maritime security through partnerships with common goals to ensure that the coasts of Africa are safe from drugs, weapons, human trafficking, illegal trafficking and other forms of illegitimate and harmful activities offshore.
On board a selected vessel, partners including Ghana, Nigeria and Togo worked together to promote sustainable peace and stability on the African continent.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Sao Tome & Principe, the Hub Officer for APS, Lt. Cdr. Samuel Ayelazono, said the important component of the work of the navy was infrastructure.
He said the Ghana Navy needed infrastructure to carry out its mandate and noted that there were signals that the government had taken such issues seriously to provide modern platforms to help boost the fleet of the Ghana Navy to be more effective and efficient in the discharge of its duties.
Aside the new platforms, he said, there would be refitting of the older crafts to stay longer at sea instead of sailing for a short time.
The hub officer said currently there are 12 sailors and 5 officers from the Ghana Navy who are currently undergoing training together with their counterparts from Nigeria and Togo in the areas of oil platform protection, search and rescue, small boat maintenance, intelligence, maritime law, medical emergency first responder, meteorology, fisheries management and anti-terrorism.
The officer said the four pillars of this year APS, which were the professional development of officers and sailors of the navies, response capabilities, maritime awareness and logistics or infrastructure, would go a long way in equipping the trainees.
In the long run, they were aimed at improving maritime security along the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, as well as enhancing cooperation between the people in the sub-region.
No nation in the world, he said, could contain maritime threat alone irrespective of the said country’s response capabilities, but teamwork.
Asked if they had been able to achieve any of the set targets for this year, he said the training had covered all areas under the set targets.
He said while sovereign states worked to ensure that they equipped their forces, the training came in handy to ensure that those who would be deployed to man this operation had the understanding of the mission before sailing.
That aside, he said navies from various countries would share ideas and experiences from their respective countries, which was vital for the needed teamwork aimed at finding solution to the same problem.
APS began in 2006 after series of maritime conferences in West and Central Africa when leaders of Africa stated their desire to improve maritime governance and create a stable maritime environment.
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