IN CHARGE: Gener al Sékouba Konaté, Commander-in-Chief of the ASF (XINHUA)

With the propensity for armed conflict high in Africa, the African Union (AU) has established an African Standby Force (ASF) to assist in preventing armed conflict or restore peace where war has broken out on the continent. Douala, Cameroon's economic capital, is to be the ASF's military base.

The decision to establish the ASF was taken by the African Ministers of Defense, during the fourth regular meeting of the Specialized Technical Committee of the African Union for defense, safety and security, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on December 7, 2010. The establishment of the ASF is a key step in the process to enable Africa to have real autonomy and greater efficiency in the areas of peace and resolution of conflict, which is one of the main obstacles preventing overall development.

General Sékouba Konaté, former President of the transitional government in Republic of Guinea, the Commander in Chief of the ASF, told media while in Cameroon in September 2011 that by 2015, the ASF would be fully prepared to deploy its missions in crisis areas of the continent. Konaté said by December 2012 the force would be already partially operational. The AU has given about $2 million as part payment for initial operations.

Logistics hub

The Cameroon Government has offered the AU land and infrastructure to assist with building the ASF base, and it is estimated that $100 million is needed to complete the project. The AU Commission has already paid nearly 1 billion F. CFA ($2.2 million). The Cameroon base will focus on being the ASF's logistics hub, known as the Continental Logistics Base (CLB), and will not store weapons, say AU officials.

The CLB will cover the whole of Africa and provide logistics for the five regional ASF standby forces located in Central Africa, West Africa, East Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa. Douala will also act as the Central Africa regional depot. Standby forces are made up of troops from across the continent.

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Cameroon's selection

Cameroon is the base where all the logistic support of the ASF is stored.  These stores will include military equipment from the AU, but will remain the property of the AU and not of Cameroon. Troops from across the continent will assemble in Douala and then be deployed from there to the five regional bases.

Several African countries applied to host the headquarters of the ASF, but Douala, Cameroon got the nod ahead of final contenders Mombassa (Kenya) and Algiers (Algeria), as it is a container port, has an international airport, water facilities, a power grid, telecommunications infrastructure and is strategically centrally located in Africa to enable quick deployment and logistics requirements.  In addition Cameroon's political stability and bilingual official languages of English and French (Africa's two most widely spoken languages) make it easy for communication, according to Professor Joseph Ebode, Director of the Research Center of Political and Strategic Studies at the University of Yaoundé II-Soa.

African solutionEbode believes that the UN, acting for the international community, uses the AU as one of its branches and the UN in a sense strategically outsources problem-solving at a regional level to the AU.

"For example, when a problem [conflict] occurs on the African continent, the first measures should be taken by Africans themselves, of course in accordance with the laws governing the structure of conflict resolution in the United Nations. So it's not incompatible. This is even more complementary, as there is no overlap, even though the management of some recent conflicts in Africa have raised some questions in the minds of Africans," said Ebode.

To date there has been no reaction to the ASF establishment from Western countries. The ASF base in Cameroon will hopefully become the future base of support operations to bring peace in Africa.

 (Reporting from Cameroon)