On 20 November 2014, the NATO Defense College (NDC) Research Division and Royal Norwegian Embassy – NATO contact mission to the African Union (AU) – co-organized an academic seminar in Addis Ababa entitled: AU-NATO Collaboration – Towards a Strategic Partnership. The event, which received mention in the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), provided a platform for a pan-African community of policy-makers, diplomats and scholars to discuss with NATO officials and experts the recently-signed AU-NATO military-technical agreement, as well as to look ahead to prospects for future collaboration.
Following the opening remarks by the seminar chairman, Dr. Brooke Smith-Windsor of the NDC Research Division, H.E. Ambassador Andreas Gaarder of Norway welcomed participants to the seminar. Mr. Michael Soula, Deputy Director of Operations – NATO HQ, and H.E. Ambassador Sidibe Fatoumata Kaba of the Republic of Guinea, provided the keynote addresses to the diverse audience of over 100 participants. An number of rich panel discussions ensured which addressed a broad range of fields holding promise for possible further AU-NATO cooperation including: women, peace and security, structured political dialogue, strategic lift, multinational forces interoperability, exercise planning and training, counter-terrorism, pan-African maritime strategy operationalization, as well as shared lessons learned from peace support operations.
The main input for the seminar were the findings and recommendations of NDC Research Paper 102, “Resetting” AU-NATO relations: from ad hoc military-technical cooperation to strategic partnership, authored by the AU expert, Dr Mehari Taddele Maru of Ethiopia, a former NDC Research Fellow.
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