Military heads of delegations from the six East African Community (EAC) partner states have signed a report to confirm the timelines, exercise paper, manning and resourcing of the EAC 12th Edition Command Post Exercise (CPX) code named Ushirikiano Imara 2019 due in November in Jinja, Uganda.

Brig. Richard Karemire, the UPDF spokesperson, confirmed that the report that was jointly developed by the 85 delegates drawn from the military, police, prisons and civilian agencies of the six partner states and EAC secretariat, was signed by Col Gerald Buteera on behalf of the EAC Secretary General, Colonel Gerald Nikuze on behalf of Burundi National Defence Forces, while Colonel SK Saeed signed for Kenya Defence Forces.

Major General Aloys Muganga signed for the Republic of Rwanda and Brigadier General Nhial Arou Nhial signed for South Sudan.

Brigadier General Marianus Mhangama signed on behalf of Tanzania while Brigadier General James Kinalwa signed on behalf of Uganda.

Brig Karemire said the main planning conference maintained the dates agreed during the March 2019 initial planning conference in Kampala, for the conduct of the CPX as November 04 – 17, 2019.

The final planning conference for the exercise will be held on September 24 – 26, 2019 in Uganda.

The conference agreed on the manning levels of the exercise among other issues. The manning levels specifies the respective countries’ contributions to the players in the exercise.

The meeting further adopted the exercise scenario (general idea and general instructions) aimed at exercising East African countries on four contemporary threats affecting the region; counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, conduct of peace support operations and disaster management in which emphasis was placed on prevailing challenges such as refugee influx, internal displacements, landslides, ebola epidemic among others.

According to the head of mission for the exercise Dr. Sam Omara, the CPX will be conducted in line with the EAC Protocol on Cooperation in Defence Affairs in which partner states agreed to co-operate in military training.

Other areas of co-operation are joint operations, technical co-operation and visits and exchanges to include sports activities among others.