East Africa’s Intelligence Sharing Centre Launched in Uganda

Uganda has launched the East African Fusion and Liaison Unit (EA-FLU), an intelligence gathering centre that will support and facilitate regional security cooperation initiatives to curb transnational threats.

The EA-FLU was created following a resolution of the 5th meeting of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) held in Nairobi on 2nd September 2014.

The development followed understanding by the Heads of State of the respective countries to support regional security mechanisms.

Launching of EA-FLU on Thursday coincided with the 5th meeting of the Heads of Intelligence and Security Services (HISS) in the East Africa region and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) held at Imperial Resort Hotel in Entebbe.

The EA-FLU coordination committee shall comprise of all heads of intelligence from the partner countries and the chairperson shall be appointed on rotational basis for one (1) year term.

The centre was officially opened by Francisco Madeira, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (SRCC) for Somalia.

While speaking at the meeting, Ambassador Madeira Francisco said; “The regional security chiefs have signed a pact to share intelligence among the member states to fight and combat terrorism. We thank Uganda for hosting the meeting and enabling the security heads to have successful deliberations”.

He hailed the government of Uganda for taking a lead in creation of the EA-FLU to help institutionalize cooperation as it is needed to tackle threats faced by member states.

He said the Djibouti process was essential to review security of member states and to share experiences in challenges of security which include Al Shabab in Somalia and the situation in South Sudan that has created a refugee crisis.

Other security threats highlighted were Cyber attacks, transnational crimes, human trafficking, money laundering, misuse of the internet to spread harmful propaganda and epidemic outbreaks.

Security Minister Elly Tumwine, who was the guest of honor at the function, highlighted the need for cooperation and mentioned some of the challenges faced by nations including political and cyber crime that require joint efforts to combat.

He likened cooperation to culverts under a bridge and that the security challenge is to share information and intelligence to break barriers caused mainly by information peddlers.

The meeting was attended by respective heads of Security Services from partner States including; Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.