France and Ivory Coast inaugurated an academy that is designed to cater and ramp up counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel; a region that has been marred by jihadists affiliated to both Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The counterterrorism academy is based in the outskirts of Abidjan and it will be referred to as International Academy for the Fight Against Terrorism (AILCT). The three-building site will put those attending the academy through three stages of Special Forces anti-terrorism training.
While the academy is only now being inaugurated, the academy has graduated at least 500 individuals since its inception in 2017 and will continue to be at the forefront of excellence and solution-seeking for the West African states.
The region has especially been facing the threat caused by jihadists in nations such as Mali and Burkina Faso and as such as African nations seek to curate homegrown solutions to crises and threats within their territories the academy is a step in ensuring the same. The training academy will be instrumental in ensuring that the nations are able to curate and employ solutions both military, political, and socio-economically suitable for the Sahel nations.
