To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to strengthen partnerships with African countries to help build resilience against terrorism.
Answered on
17 February 2025
Our partnerships with African countries are a core component of our approach to tackling terrorism across the continent, drawing on our domestic counter-terrorism experience while learning from our African partners' unique perspectives to enhance this work. The UK works to strengthen partnerships with key African partners through bilateral cooperation, such as our Security and Defence partnerships with Nigeria and Ghana, and our Security Compact with Kenya. The UK is also proactively engaged in supporting regional initiatives such as the African Union and multilateral institutions, including the Global Coalition Against Daesh and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF).
Through the UK's Integrated Security Fund, we are directly supporting capacity and resilience building, complementary to conflict prevention, stabilisation, and development approaches. For example, the Kenya-Somalia-Ethiopia Borderlands Project integrates preventing violent extremism activity with development and peacebuilding approaches to improve stability and counter the regional threat posed by Al-Shabaab.