The summit ended last Saturday with an expressed desire to work more closely in addressing growing security challenges and other problems.The views of two European leaders at the summit best illustrate the success of the Elysée Summit on Peace and Security in Africa. One, President François Hollande of France described it as exceptional across the board, exceptional in turnout with 53 countries represented , among them some 30 Heads of State, exceptional in its outcomes and exceptional in the overwhelming resolve to act. The other, Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council said “African leaders had never before been so engaged on issues affecting them as we observed all along this summit”. These two remarks find their importance as we shall observe in the scope and urgent nature of the resolutions taken in the area of peace and security, economic partnership and climate change; the three core issues discussed during the two-day summit on Friday and Saturday in Paris convened on the initiative of the French President François Hollande.

The summit opened Friday morning barely hours after the death of South Africa’s first Black President Nelson Mandela was announced. A huge portrait of Mandela adorned the back wall in the hall and the opening ceremony was preceded by a special tribute during which President Hollande read a prepared statement in which he said “Nelson Mandela changed more than South Africa; he accelerated the course of world affairs”. Two other senior officials of South African extraction present in the hall - the country’s Foreign Minister Ms Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and the President of the African Union Commission, Ms Nkozasana Dlamani Zuma - also took the floor to talk about the sterling qualities of President Mandela. A minute of silence was then observed with some statements made by Mandela were played tearing across the silence of the hall.

But what loomed most during the two days of the summit was the degenerating security situation in the Republic of Central Africa where participants saw almost live on TV screens brutal street killings and massacres, thus reinforcing the desire to address the principal theme of the summit with greater concern. With regard to security, specifically, the main decisions of the summit included the setting up an African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) training by France of 20,000 African soldiers per year for five years including the provision of military advisers to the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS and the Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS. France also pledged to design and equip the headquarters of the established African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC). The summit also called on African countries to ratify the arms trade Treaty. A high-level debate is also under consideration to discuss drug trafficking in West Africa while support for ongoing multilateral and bilateral initiatives on border security were also encouraged by the summit.

Maritime Security

On maritime security, notably in the Gulf of Guinea, the creation of a training college on State action at sea and the implementation of the Yaounde Declaration were strongly recommended. Here, reference was being made to recommendations made at the summit convened on June 24 and 25 this year by President Paul Biya in Yaounde to address security issues in the Gulf of Guinea. That summit was attended by some 12 Heads of African States and took wide-ranging decisions embodied in what is now known as the Yaounde Declaration and which was used as one of the essential working papers at this Paris summit. The recommendations, if implemented, as prescribed by the Elysée summit, will go a long way to bringing back security to this important economic zone and waterway heavily infested by pirates and other armed groups.

It is very clear that President Paul Biya must have thrown all his weight during the closed door deliberations to sell all the good intentions of the Yaounde Declaration.

With regard to the crisis in the Central African Republic, Cameroon has also been a key player as far as the present military intervention by France is concerned. Cameroon’s actions have not only been protecting its borders to prevent a generalisation of the conflict beyond CAR borders, but has also been in the support to French troops by facilitating the deployment of troops and military material through the provision of a safe corridor between Douala and Bouar.

It is probably within this aegis that prior to the opening of the summit last Friday, the President of the Republic received in audience the French Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian. Nothing about their 20-minute discussion at the fifth floor apartment if President Biya at the Meurice Hotel filtered to the press. But there could not have been any doubt that the central issue was Centrafrica and the current exercise to deploy troops.

The Head of State was an active participant at the summit for several reasons not only for the issues under discussion for which he has made very many salient suggestions in the past to international gatherings such as the need to improve economic partnerships in the world, but also on security for which he single-handedly organised a summit. Moreover, Cameroon and other neighbouring CEMAC countries are very much on the frontline of what is happening in the CAR today. From this perspective President Paul Biya must have been a very active participant at the special summit organised at the end of the Elysée summit, devoted exclusively to the Central African Republic chaired by President Hollande and also attended by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Also in attendance were Heads of State or government or representatives from Angola, Burundi, CAR, Chad, Congo, DRC, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan and Uganda as well as the AU Commission President. An immediate outcome of the special summit the increase of the African stand-by force in the CAR from the current 2500 to 6000 troops.

The presidential couple spent a quiet Sunday afternoon in Paris yesterday after the event-packed weekend.