The Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA) has concluded its 16th Ordinary Conference, with one of the highlights being the announcement of the establishment of a database to track all terrorist fighters across the African continent, aimed at monitoring their movements and proactively disrupting their activities.

Another highlight was the appointment of Ambassador Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), as CISA Chairperson.

Rufai, who takes over from Mr. B. K. Likando of the Namibia Central Intelligence Service, chairs this year’s conference with the theme, “Illicit Financial Outflows from Africa and Their Impact on National Security and Development.”

Speaking on the theme of the conference, the Executive Secretary of CISSA Mr. Shimeles W. Semayat stressed that there are security implications of Financial Outflows from Africa as well as financing of terrorists and extremists activities.

He noted that since the activities are highly transnational, it behooves on the African countries to cooperate, pool resources together, share and coordinate intelligence in order to effectively deal with the evolving security challenges confronting the continent.

It is on the premise, he revealed that the African security services are aiming to cut of the terrorists financing of which if it succeeds, would have dealt with 90 percent of the security problems.

He said: “To this end, CISSA has established a database for terrorist fighters in order to share this information easily with member states and monitor their movements and curb their activities.”

He explained that the creation of CISSA was informed by the realisation that the security threats confronting Africa were increasingly becoming transnational and borderless in nature.

Hence the need for the continent’s Intelligence and Security Services to cooperate and coordinate their efforts through collaboration action in order to respond effectively to the security needs of the continent and individual member countries.

“One of the key objectives of CISSA is to provide intelligence support to the African Union leadership in its efforts to maintain peace, security and stability in Africa by means of prevention, management and resolution of conflicts and elimination of all forms of security threats on the continent.

“In this regard, CISS functions as a ‘Silent Pillar of the AU Peace and Security Architecture’ and provides strategic and predictive intelligence to the AU Commission, in particular the Peace and Security Council (PSC), for informed policy decision-making relating to the maintenance of peace, security and stability on the continent,” he said.

Semayat said the Conference which is holding between the 17th and 20th of July and will be declared opened by President Muhammadu Buhari, who will also deliver a keynote address at the event.

“During the closed session, participants at the Conference will deliberate on major issues of security concern on the continent and adopt appropriate strategies to deal with the various threats to peace, security and stability in Africa,” he added.

PRNigeria gathered that the NIA Director-General, will provide strategic leadership and guidance to the organisation in carrying out its core mandate of ensuring peace, security and stability in Africa until next year conference.

•Adapted from a PRNigeria report.