Participants from more than 30 African nations met with their Western counterparts from the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands this week in Accra, Ghana, to finalize planning for Exercise Africa Endeavor 2012.

The final planning conference kicked off April 30, 2012 with opening ceremonies followed by a press conference with Ghanian media representatives. Colonel Andrew Kostic, U.S. Africa Command deputy director for Joint Training and Exercises, welcomed more than 150 participants and outlined the goal of this year's exercise.

"Africa Endeavor participants have made great strides in achieving human and technical communications interoperability over the last five years. Building on our previous success, advancing our procedural interoperability is the next step and our goal for Africa Endeavor 2012," Kostic said.

Exercise Africa Endeavor is primarily a communications and interoperability exercise that began in 2006. It has been hosted in South Africa, Nigeria, Gabon, Ghana, and The Gambia. This year, it will be held in Cameroon in mid-June. Over the years, as the capabilities and capacities of participating nations have increased, the exercise has continued to grow in scope. This year's 10-day exercise will consist of two to three days of training, followed by two days of network testing, and finally four days of a scenario-driven command post exercise. During the command post portion, participating nations will organize regionally and will staff a notional Standby Force at the Brigade and Battalion levels.

"Over the course of three planning conferences this year, each African delegation has collectively determined who would instruct the courses that will be taught at the exercise," explained Commander Bryan McRoberts, U.S. Africa Command's exercise director. "They've prepared the material, and then the African instructors will provide that course of instruction to the attendees at the exercise in June. During network testing, we will establish all of the communication networks -- voice and data -- to support the exercise, and we will conduct interoperability testing to validate the communications between each node that will participate. That will help determine what the appropriate configurations are for all of the equipment, which will be documented and then provided to all the exercise participants to support future planning efforts in support of future operations."

The final planning conference was hosted by the Ghana Armed Forces and held at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center. The Center's Commandant, Air Vice Marshal Christian Dovlo, shared some thoughts with participants during the opening ceremonies.

"We very unfortunately live on a continent which...still continues to have so much instability and armed conflict that we cannot afford not to train and be ready to implement the collective decisions of our REGs, the African Union and the United Nations in their quest to neutralize, minimize, and solve the conflicts, using agreed mechanisms and which require muti-national armed intervention. Current events unfolding in Mali and Guinea Bissau and the decisions taken by [the Economic Community of West African States] heads of state clearly reinforces this important point."

In addition to hosting this year's Final Planning Conference, Ghana hosted the exercise in 2010 and has participated in it every year since its inception in 2006.

"The aim of Africa Endeavor is to assist African militaries to develop workable concepts in terms of communications, command/control, what have you," explained Brigadier General Joseph Kwankye, director general, Communications and Information Systems Department, Ghana Armed Forces. "Apart from building the capacity of our soldiers...we've also got to know a lot about police of other countries -- the way they operate, what type of equipment they use, and the concepts they also have. We all remember what happened when ECOWAS first deployed in Liberia, and the challenges we faced. Most of these challenges we faced have been solved during the course of our participation in these exercises and conferences...so let me say, it has been very useful and beneficial to Ghana."