Maritime Security and Capacity Building in The Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness, gaps, and how maritime capacity building influences security priorities

TY - JOUR

T1 - Maritime Security and Capacity Building in The Gulf of Guinea

T2 - On comprehensiveness, gaps, and how maritime capacity building influences security priorities

AU - Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov

PY - 2017/8/8

Y1 - 2017/8/8

N2 - It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon, involving a variety issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest, youth unemployment etc.) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that not only do we need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as will be shown, important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). What is more, we also need to appreciate that, even if these gaps represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritized, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.

AB - It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon, involving a variety issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest, youth unemployment etc.) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that not only do we need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as will be shown, important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). What is more, we also need to appreciate that, even if these gaps represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritized, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Maritime capacity building

KW - Gulf of Guinea

KW - Intervention

KW - security priorities

U2 - 10.1080/10246029.2017.1291441

DO - 10.1080/10246029.2017.1291441

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1024-6029

VL - 26

SP - 237

EP - 256

JO - African Security Review

JF - African Security Review

IS - 3

M1 - 1

ER -