Ask experts for solutions to Africa’s many security challenges, and many are likely to call for more cooperation, training and professionalism for militaries. The path toward that goal leads through one of the continent’s many centers of excellence.
Over the past 25 years or so, Africa has seen a boom in institutions designed to help military leaders understand and respond to key security issues such as artificial intelligence, counterterrorism, maritime security and empowering noncommissioned officers.
The centers are designed to develop leadership, expertise and best practices in specific fields. Some, such as the Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organization, have spent decades helping members collaborate. Others, such as South Africa’s Defence Artificial Intelligence Research Unit, started in 2024, study the military implications of AI.
“Professionalism is very important,” Maj. Gen. Davidson Forleh, chief of staff for the Armed Forces of Liberia, told ADF during the 2025 African Chiefs of Defense Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. “In the past, the military was looked at as a kind of beast.”
Liberia reformed its military after civil wars in the 1990s, relying on the kind of training available at institutions such as the African Union Counter Terrorism Centre and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre to build a professional military.
“Whether they address terrorism, maritime security, enhancing African peacekeeping missions or other issues, a lot of the solution sets to these national security challenges require responses that have to go beyond kinetic actions,” Catherine Lena Kelly, an expert on democratization and governance at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told ADF.
Centers of excellence complement the work of military academies and defense universities by providing leaders with a space to share ideas with colleagues who face the same issues, Kelly said. Civilian experts bring a perspective on problems and solutions driven by academic research.
Forleh said the relationships leaders build while attending a center of excellence often translate into better cooperation among nations and militaries in the real world. He cited Liberia’s work with Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone to patrol the western Gulf of Guinea.
Above all, centers of excellence expand the growing professionalism of militaries across Africa as lessons learned by high-ranking leaders spread through the ranks, Kelly said.