A high-level African Union (AU) Commission official on Sunday commended China and other foreign partners for their support to the African Standby Force (ASF).
The statement was made by the AU Commission Director of Peace and Security Department, Admore Kambudzi, during the AU’s 12th ordinary meeting of the specialized technical committee on defence, safety and security.
Kambudzi, who noted a number of initiatives that are on the pipeline by the 55-member pan African bloc towards silencing the guns across the African continent, stressed that majority of the initiatives aimed at “developing and enhancing the policies, structures, mechanisms and resources to make ASF rapidly deployable.”
“A number of AU member states have put at the disposal of the AU Commission more resources as required including the Air Lifts,” the AU Peace and Security Director said in his opening remark at the high-level meeting.
Partners, mainly China and Turkey, have delivered equipment to equip our African Standby Force, Kambudzi said.
China has been a major partner of the AU in its quest to bring about peace and stability across the continent.
On November 12, high-level officials drawn of the AU and China had discussed ways of further deepening China’s continued support to the AU’s efforts in the peace and security sector, with a particular emphasis on the operationalization of the ASF.
The discussion, among Smail Chergui, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security with a high-level military delegation from China at the AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, mainly discussed issues “of mutual interest, including China’s continued support to the operationalization of the African Standby Force, more specifically the AU Continental Logistics Base and Regional Logistics Depots,” Chergui had said in a statement issued after the meeting.
