Senior military intelligence officials from East Africa, Europe, the U.S., Canada, and representatives from the African Union Mission to Somalia met during the annual East Africa Directors of Military Intelligence Conference held in Stuttgart, Germany.
The conference, hosted by the AFRICOM Intelligence Directorate (J2), is aimed at developing military intelligence relationships, addressing common regional challenges, and defining a shared way forward to address the most pressing issues.
The conference further enforced the importance of the partnering nations to trusts each other as well as strive to work together to deal with a highly complex, dynamic environment region in which threats rapidly evolve and change.
Intelligence sharing, especially within AMISOM and partners, allows for nuanced integration of intelligence and perspectives across multiple regional stakeholders to provide a much more comprehensive and detailed picture.
34 representatives from 10 African partner nations attended the conference where critical issues in East Africa—countering violent extremist organization such as al-Shabaab or ISIS-Somalia, interdicting illicit trafficking, tracking foreign fighter movement or ensuring maritime security were discussed.
