On April 16 and 17, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Defense and intelligence services organized the East African Defense Intelligence Forum in Addis Ababa, where military and intelligence representatives from Sudan, Djibouti, South Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda participated.
The purpose of the forum is to promote greater and increasingly intense coordination of regional military forces and intelligence services in order to effectively counter the growing terrorist threat hanging over the Horn of Africa region and enhance joint efforts.
The participating countries adhered to the Ethiopian proposal to participate in a project called “Peaceful and Secure Africa”, collaborating on border security, cyber threats and environmental protection, and with the aim of creating a regional security community capable of working jointly to prevent and control the various sources of threat affecting all the countries participating in the initiative.
Kenya, however, did not participate at the forum, although Addis Ababa and Nairobi held bilateral talks a few weeks ago to strengthen the military capacity of the East Africa Standby Force. These talks were conducted on March 30 by the chief of staff of the Ethiopian armed forces, General Berhanu Jula, and his Kenyan counterpart, General Robert Kariuki Kibochi.
