East African Armed Forces Meet in Kampala

By Kampala Post Reporter

Representatives from the Military, Police, Prisons, civilian components and other stakeholders from all the six East African Community (EAC) partner states are meeting in Kampala to plan for the 12th Edition Command Post Exercise (CPX), to be held in Uganda.

The meeting is underway at Silver Springs Hotel. In a statement, Uganda’s Army Spokesperson Brigadier Richard Karemire said the main planning conference (MPC) is chaired by Rwanda’s Major General Aloys Muganga. Muganga says among the issues to be harmonized in the next three days are logistics requirements for the exercise and review of the timelines.

The initial planning conference held in March agreed to conduct the exercise in November 2019. Brigadier James Kinalwa, the Chief of Recruitment and Training of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces confirms Uganda’s readiness to conduct the exercise at UPDF’s Jinja cantonment at the Uganda Rapid Deployment Capability Center and Junior Staff College.

He noted that during the initial planning conference, the delegates inspected and approved the availability of facilities necessary for the conduct of the joint exercise, codenamed Ushirikiano Imara 2019. According to the head of mission for the planning exercise, Dr. Sam Omara from the Uganda Embassy in United Arab Emirates, the objectives of the exercise are, among others, to promote the EAC integration agenda, its awareness, interoperability of the EAC armed forces and to improve their readiness in responding to complex security challenges in the region.

Dr. Omara added that the exercise will cover four thematic areas; peace support operations, counter-terrorism, counter-piracy, and disaster management. Under disaster management, the conference underscored the need to give special attention to recurring challenges in the region such as the Ebola epidemic.

The hosting of the CPX and Field Training Exercises (FTX) is rotational among the EAC member states. The United Republic of Tanzania hosted the last military exercise in 2017/18. The exercises have been conducted since 2005.