CAMEROON NAVY INCREASING CAPABILITIES:
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| Aresa 2400 CPV DEFENDER (Photo by Grup Aresa.) |
According to a story carried in MARINE AND ENGINEERING LOG's MARINE LINK.COM, Marine and Engineering Log's on line magazine Cameroon is poised to accept delivery of two new patrol boats from Spanish builder Grup Aresa. Grup Aresa has worked extensively with the Cameroon Navy previously and at present the Navy has at least 12 Grup Aresa vessels in commission. You can click on the Grup Aresa link for a video which depicts the several types of vessels that have been delivered to the Cameroon Navy. Above is an image of the type being delivered at present. According to the Grup Aresa web site:
"The Spanish shipbuilding group has worked extensively with Cameroon, supplying a sizeable number of vessels to its Navy, which has 12 Aresa boats in service. This figure includes six Aresa 750 Commandos RIBs – delivered last August -, five 1200 Stealth RIBs and one 1200 Defcon RIB – delivered in May 2013. Further deliveries will take place in February when two 32-meter patrol boats will be delivered."
More details are available on both the Grup Aresa.site and at Maine Link.Com. Both sites have additional photographs and the Grup Aresa site has a video. Our congratulations to the Cameroon Navy on their new acquisitions. This is another sign of progress towards Cameroon fully developing the ability to protect the sovereignty of her territorial waters and enforce her customs zones and exclusive economic zones 24 /7. Yesterday we carried news of Kenya's decision to create a coast guard. Cameroon is across the continent on the Atlantic side of Africa and its increasingly competent naval forces are becoming a force for law and order.
Cameroon's larger neighbor Nigeria has a much larger navy and coast guard and within their navy they have a Special Boat Unit capable of many tasks associated with SEAL and Marine Corps type missions. There have been some outbreaks of piracy off of Nigeria but these have been rather quickly handled by the Nigerian Navy / Coast Guard. Piracy has increased by one third off of the Ivory Coast which has bitten the financial bullet to purchase 40 new vessels to update its naval forces. We do not expect the problems off of the Ivory Coast to reach the proportion of the Somali problem. We rather expect that the regional African powers are on top of the problem and NATO / EU/ US international task forces will probably not be needed as they have been off of Somalia. This is great news for every nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nations willing to invest in right sized properly equipped, competent naval forces will bring the wealth of the African outer continental shelf into the public coffers, and help keep the peace moving it from the fragile nature of the not so distant past, to a truly robust state.
Cameroon's larger neighbor Nigeria has a much larger navy and coast guard and within their navy they have a Special Boat Unit capable of many tasks associated with SEAL and Marine Corps type missions. There have been some outbreaks of piracy off of Nigeria but these have been rather quickly handled by the Nigerian Navy / Coast Guard. Piracy has increased by one third off of the Ivory Coast which has bitten the financial bullet to purchase 40 new vessels to update its naval forces. We do not expect the problems off of the Ivory Coast to reach the proportion of the Somali problem. We rather expect that the regional African powers are on top of the problem and NATO / EU/ US international task forces will probably not be needed as they have been off of Somalia. This is great news for every nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nations willing to invest in right sized properly equipped, competent naval forces will bring the wealth of the African outer continental shelf into the public coffers, and help keep the peace moving it from the fragile nature of the not so distant past, to a truly robust state.
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