By Emmanuel Nduka Obisue
President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Omar Alieu Touray, has announced plans by the regional bloc to activate a 260,000-man counter-terrorism brigade.
Touray made this known at the African Chiefs of Defence Staff Summit 2025, held in Abuja, with the theme: “Combating contemporary threats to regional peace and security in Africa: The role of strategic defence collaboration”.
Represented by the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, Touray said the Community requires $2.5 billion for the activation of the force, provision of logistics, and financial support to frontline troops in states battling terrorism.
A total of 36 out of 54 African countries were represented at the summit. While Niger Republic attended, Mali and Burkina Faso were absent, a development observers linked to the political tensions between the countries and ECOWAS.
Touray noted that no region in Africa is free from terrorism, civil wars, organised crime and underdevelopment, stressing the need for a continental response coordinated by the African Union.
“There is no gain saying that West Africa, in particular the Sahel sub-region, has emerged as the epicentre of global terrorism, with several analytical surveys indicating that the Sahel accounted for 51% of global terrorism deaths in 2024 alone,” he said.
He revealed that ECOWAS Heads of Government are in the process of activating the 260,000 rapid deployment counter-terrorism brigade, alongside logistics and financial support for frontline states.
“While ECOWAS remains firmly committed to raising its 5,000-man brigade under the auspices of the African Peace and Security Architecture and more particularly the Continental Standby Force, the activation of this rapid deployment force has become a necessity given the asymmetric security dynamics in the region.
“We are conscious of the fact that this bold initiative requires the necessary financial resources and capabilities to make it a reality.
“To this end, ECOWAS will be hosting a meeting of the Ministers of Finance and Defense to agree on the country’s funding modalities to raise an annual budget of USD2.5 billion for the activation of the regional counter-terrorism force,” he said.
He added that the bloc was “throwing the gauntlet to bilateral and multilateral partners to complement this daring regional initiative,” and urged the African Union and the United Nations to step up support.
“In particular, we hope that this summit will, through the African Union, send a clarion call to the United Nations to redeem the pledge made under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2719 of December 2023 to fund 75% of African-led peace support operations,” he said.
Touray also disclosed that beyond the counter-terrorism effort, ECOWAS was working on operationalising its integrated maritime security strategy with three regional maritime centres and an international maritime coordinating centre in Abuja, as well as a strategy to counter transnational organised crime.
Heritage Times HT had reported that in his remarks, former Minister of External Affairs and Nigeria’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, disclosed that there are over 1,000 insurgency groups operating across Africa.
He said, “According to some research work done by the African Research Network for Regional and Global Governance Innovation with headquarters in Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy, and Development here in Nigeria, there are now over 1,000 insurgency groups in Africa, and the number keeps rising and the majority of our regional economic commission are actually dealing with banditry and terrorism and other forms of insurgency”.
Gambari called on African nations to secure their individual states before focusing on regional and continental security. He urged governments to strengthen defence industries, develop indigenous technologies, and design security architecture that guarantees human security.
He added that, “Africa’s collective security can only be enhanced with active, practical, and proactive collaboration at regional and continental levels.
“There must be synergy in military cooperation, promotion of common training, promotion of common doctrinal concepts, sharing of intelligence, the interoperability of armaments, but also capacity building, particularly in air lifting, all of which are essential for operationalisation of the African standby force.
“We must also upgrade and strengthen our defense industries and all our technologies in order to avoid control from external forces”.
