Christian Bueger

Tag Archives: capacity building


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Navigating complexity in Western Indian Ocean maritime security – new article

My latest analysis, published with the Center for Maritime Strategy, highlights the intricate web of maritime security challenges in the Western Indian Ocean. From piracy to drug trafficking, the region faces diverse threats requiring coordinated international response. Despite numerous initiatives, a cohesive security architecture remains elusive due to competing visions and priorities among stakeholders.

I emphasize the crucial role of the Contact Group on Illicit Maritime Activities (CGIMA) as a neutral platform for strategic dialogue. While a unified structure is unlikely, CGIMA offers hope for better coordination and inclusivity. The goal: navigate complexity through open communication and collaboration, ensuring a safer Western Indian Ocean through collective action.


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Building regional maritime security expertise – event in Singapore

Maritime Security depends on effective national capacities for law enforcement and surveillance as well as regional networks. Different approaches are used to help states to develop capacities and networks, including short term training courses and exercises.

This week I had the opportunity to participate in a seminar of an Australian capacity building initiative – the ASEAN Maritime Security Research Program.

✎ This program works with senior officials and allows them to conduct a 3 months research stay at the Australian centers for Sea Power and Air and Space Power. Participants develop a supervised research project on maritime security, participate in military interrelationship activities, such as base visits, and attend Australian multi national military gatherings. Many of the results of the research projects are published.

✎ Announced in 2018 at the Australia-ASEAN summit, 38 military officials from 8 ASEAN nations have participated in the program. Its main objectives are to develop national maritime security expertise, but also build trust, open channels of communication, share best practice and learn lessons, identify innovative solutions, and form a robust network of maritime security experts.

💡The program is noteworthy in the way that it emphasizes longevity and sustainable networks, but also for its focus on developing analytical and research skills, which is often undervalued in capacity building.

Australian organizers, Singapore, 28.8.2024
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What is the right mix of interventions for maritime security in the global South?

This was one of the questions that was discussed at a webinar on the situation in the Gulf of Guinea on 21.10. At the seminar organized by the Portuguese Atlantic Center in collaboration with the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute, the first key issue was what the state of the maritime security architecture currently is. Solomon Agada from the Nigerian Navy, and Cilles Ghehab from the GoGIN project addressed the substantial progress under way.

The debate then turned to more general questions about interventions and capacity building. Emanuel Bell Bell from the ICC Yaounde argued that more local ownership is needed and dependency needs to be reduced. In my own contribution I drew on the lessons from our book on capacity building and the research done in the frame of the AMARIS project. I argued for the importance of recognizing the political dimensions of capacity building – local, regional, and geopolitical – and turning to long term funding and maintenance questions. I also highlighted the importance of appreciating failures in capacity building to learn, not the least given much of current projects are experimental in nature.


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New research project AMARIS

Our new research project Analyzing Maritime Insecurity in Ghana (AMARIS) is launching. The project which is part of the SafeSeas family, investigates the inter-linkage between blue crimes in Ghana’s waters, maritime security governance in the country, including a case study of the maritime security strategy, as well as the impact of external capacity building assistance. The project is funded by the Danish International Development Agency DANIDA and is a cooperation between the University of Copenhagen, CEMLAWS Africa, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, and the University of Ghana. It will run until 2022. Part of the project is a training school for junior maritime security analysts from West Africa. More information will be available soon on the SafeSeas website.


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New article on capacity building published

What can we learn from maritime security for how capacity building is carried out? Analyzing recent capacity building practices in the Western Indian Ocean , a new article on innovation in capacity building addresses this. The article is published by Third World Quarterly and available here. It is one of the outputs of the British Academy funded SafeSeas research project. Contact me if you do not have access through your institution.


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Maritime Security Conference in Nigeria

To revitalise the African discussion on maritime security the government of Nigeria is organising a Global Maritime Security Conference held in Abuja from the 7th to 9th of October. At the event I will give one of the keynote speeches, discussing different reasons for why there continues to be a lack of attention for the sea, investigating in particular neo-colonial arguments and the exploitative tenets in the blue economy project.


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UNODC training week in Stellenbosch

From the 24th to 27th of September I will be attending the training week of UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme (GMCP), held in Stellenbosch, South Africa. At the event I will deliver two training sessions. The first one looks at Environmental Crime at Sea, and is largely a scoping exercise, asking how we should conceptualise environmental crimes in the context of ocean governance and the anthroprocene. The second session focuses on Maritime Security Governance drawing on the SafeSeas Best Practice Toolkit and the governance model presented there as well as the relevance of maritime security strategy. I will also chair a public roundtable jointly organised with SIGLA. The roundtable is titled “Caught between AIMS-2050 and Lomé: Why do African states still not care about the seas and oceans?”. It features a range of South Africa based maritime security experts and investigates the reasons for the lack of attention in African states for ocean governance and maritime security.