Building Partner Capacity in Africa: Keys to Success
Abstract
The passage of the fiscal year (FY) 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has far-reaching implications for the Department of Defense (DoD) in two particular areas for which this study is relevant. The first is that the legislation enacts sweeping changes to how the DoD and its components, including the Department of the Army (DA), budget, manage, assess, monitor, evaluate, and report their security cooperation activities to Congress. The legislation establishes a single, comprehensive chapter in Title 10 of the U.S. Code, dedicated to the reform of the DoD's security cooperation practices. Further, as the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee notes, the Department of Defense continues to place greater emphasis on security cooperation, to include building partner capacity [BPC]. By including the term building partner capacity in his comments on the law, the chairman uses a more comprehensive term that not only includes the security sector, but also widens the focus of security cooperation as a whole-of-government effort and makes clear congressional interest in treating security cooperation as a defense institution building endeavor. In response to the congressional direction, four of the study's chapters address directly the laws intent and its provisions regarding security cooperation in general and Africa specifically. These chapters examine and offer recommendations on the following issues: (1) the concept of absorptive capacity, which the DoD considers the crucial first step in security cooperation planning regardless of the region involved; (2) professional military education (PME) in Africa as a defense institution building activity; (3) current security cooperation programming in Africa, its aims and outcomes;
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1070584
Entities
Organizations
- United States Army War College