UPDF trains in South Africa

By Vision Reporter

A contingent of UPDF troops has flown to South Africa for an African Union training exercise that will end in November.

A total of 108 troops departed on Thursday for the exercise code named “Exercise Amani Africa II”. Amani Africa is Kiswahili phrase meaning “Peace in Africa”. 

According to statement from UPDF, the exercise’s aim is to evaluate the state of readiness of the African Standby Force (ASF) and to exercise its Rapid Deployment Capability (RDC), in order to ascertain gaps and requirements for achieving Full Operational Capability (FOC) of the ASF by December 2015.

The Exercise will be conducted at the South African Army Combat Training Centre (CTC) located at Lohathla, Northern Cape. 

Approximately 5,400 members from the military, police and civilian components representing four of the Regional Economic Regions of the AU will participate in the exercise. 

“By the close of the exercise, our troops will be better skilled on crises response, managing the Challenges and Constraints of a deployed mission, adapting to a mandate change, and setting conditions for long-term solutions. 

They will be better actors in Stability Operations, promoting Rule of Law, Humanitarian Operations and on Governance and Development among others.” Col Michael Kabango who is commanding the Ugandan Contingent said.

According to the Host Nation (South Africa), the Troop Contributing Countries that have confirmed participation in the exercise are Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  

Other contributing and/or participating countries involved in the exercise are Algeria, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda.

This exercise follows Amani Africa 1, the first continental Exercise to evaluate the operational readiness of the ASF which was conducted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 2010. 

The African Standby Force is part of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) that divides Africa into Regional Economic Communities (RECs) that are supposed to develop regional security forces and mechanisms to respond to crises and conflict in their specific regions. 

These are Eastern African Standby Force (EASF), North African Regional Capacity, ECOWAS Standby Force, ECCAS Standby Force and SADC Standby Brigade.