Nations came together in November to participate in Grand African Nemo 2025, an annual exercise aimed at honing the maritime security skills of coastal West African navies.
The weeklong event aimed to strengthen navies’ ability to cooperate in response to Gulf of Guinea sea crimes, including illegal fishing, piracy, and human and drug trafficking. It launched November 10 in Accra, Ghana.
The exercise, led by the French Navy, integrated national maritime operations centers, multinational maritime coordination centers (MMCCs) and regional information hubs in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; and Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo. It focused on strengthening regional coordination, collaboration and interoperability.
More than 55 naval and coast guard assets and 11 aircraft deployed for the exercise.
They conducted simultaneous drills across multiple maritime zones. Commodore Stephen Billince Anyam, deputy chief staff officer for operations and training at Ghana Navy Headquarters, Burma Camp, said the exercise is critical in maintaining regional maritime safety.
“Every participating country has a specific responsibility,” Anyam said in a report by Ghanaian online news outlet The Sikaman Times. “Some focus on counter-piracy operations, others deal with human and drug trafficking, while others are tasked with search and rescue missions. This coordination ensures that we respond swiftly and effectively to threats at sea.”
The participating nations were Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone and Togo. Denmark, Italy, Mauritania, Morocco, Portugal and Spain supported the exercise with naval assets, aircraft and specialist teams.
According to defenceWeb, France deployed its Mistral-class amphibious assault vessel FS Tonnerre and operated in cooperation with several African navies. The ship hosted a regional training course involving about 40 officers, combining command-and-control instruction with at-sea exercises. These included a simulated narcotics interdiction conducted with the Nigerian Navy.
Ivoirian Navy Capt. Daniel Gnamiene Ehu, director of the MMCC for Zone F in Accra, commended the French Navy for its support since the inception of Grand African Nemo in 2018.
“For seven days, the Navies and Coast Guards will deploy vessels across our waters alongside the French and Spanish navies to practice real-time scenarios involving illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, piracy, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and maritime pollution,” Ehu said in a Ghana News Agency report as the exercise began.
Through the MMCC for Zone G in Praia, Cabo Verde, Gambian and Senegalese navy boarding teams conducted maritime security operations aboard a Moroccan Navy ship. MMCC Zone G countries are Cabo Verde, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Senegal.
Other drills focused on narcotics and contraband interdiction, pollution response and environmental protection, search and rescue, boarding and inspection procedures, and information sharing through regional coordination centers.
Several international maritime agencies also contributed expertise, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Interpol, the European Union, the European Fisheries Control Agency, the French pollution-response agency Cedre, the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea, and the Gulf of Guinea Regional Fisheries Commission.