Ivory Coast has established a coordinated organisation to oversee State action at sea, under the oversight of SEPCIM (Secrétariat Permanent du Comité Interministériel de l’Action de l’Etat en Mer). At an operational level, maritime surveillance and operations are carried out by various administrations in accordance with their area of interest. Many of these administrations have taken part in the the YARIS advanced training programme, held between 26 April and 7 May at the Naval MOC headquarters in Abidjan.
Christophe Deldique, GoGIN training manager, and Ruddy Goliele, Yaoundé Architecture representative and GoGIN trainer, trained 17 participants including 12 officers belonging to the following administrations: National Navy, Abidjan and San Pedro MOC, Air Force Chief of Staff, MRCC, Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs, Directorate of Fisheries, the Port of Abidjan and the Port of San Pedro.
The aim of this in-person training is to allow centre staff to use YARIS in an operational context. The range of centres present at the training meant that participants were able to take full advantage of the functionalities of YARIS as a decision making tool in an inter-administration context. The topics of each exercise and the planning methods were conceived and adapted to the local organisation, based on requests from and collaboration with local decision-makers to form participants in the perspective of exercises and future operations in Ivory Coast.
On 28 April, the YARIS platform was the focus of a presentation at SEPCIM, under the direction of M. Abroulaye Fofana, the permanent secretary; also present were the Navy, CRESMAO and the Directorate of Maritime Affairs. The SEPCIM expressed a particular interest in the usefulness of YARIS’s functionalities in managing inter-administration crises, and more widely the integration of YARIS within operational procedures at the heart of the Yaoundé Architecture. It also highlighted the value of the platform’s capacity to aggregate multiple sources of information, a precondition to merge and correlate maritime information and have a deeper understanding of the maritime domain in the waters falling within the sovereignty of Ivory Coast.
At the conclusion of these two weeks, the YARIS platform demonstrated its interest in coordinating operations at sea in both routine and cries situations, be it at national or regional levels. Ivory Coast’s Yaoundé Architecture referral centre is now connected to the operational version of the platform, Other national centres will soon be connected to the platform, and will as such be able to interact on a national basis as well as with the other centres of the Yaoundé Architecture.