WHILE West Africa remains a piracy hotspot as seen in ICC International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) latest piracy report, there are encouraging signs of improvement. IMB Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) in its second quarter 2019 report notes “a welcome and marked decrease” in attacks in the Gulf of Guinea. In particular, it commends the Nigerian navy for actively responding to reported incidents by dispatching patrol boats. Another improvement which has been taking place in the region since 2014 is with regard to the development of infrastructure among West Africa’s coastal countries involving active information sharing between clusters of countries and regions in the area. Loosely termed as the ‘Gulf of Guinea Information Sharing Framework’, the network is an offshoot of the European Union’s Strategy for the Gulf of Guinea.
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