Over 100 UPDF officers in S. Africa for training

Kampala. Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has flown a total of 108 of its troops to South Africa for African Union training.

The officers were on Thursday flagged off for the training exercise code named “Exercise Amani Africa” which will run from October 19, 2015 to November 7, 2015.

According to the UPDF spokesperson Paddy Ankunda, the exercise aimed at evaluating the state of readiness of the African Standby Force (ASF) and to exercise its Rapid Deployment Capability (RDC), in order to ascertain gaps and requirements for achieving Full Operational Capability (FOC) of the ASF by December 2015.

“The exercise will be conducted at the South African Army Combat Training Centre (CTC) in Lohathla, Northern Cape.

Approximately 5,400 members from the military, police and civilian components representing four of the Regional Economic Regions of the AU will participate in the exercise,” said Mr Ankunda in a statement released on Friday.

He added that the troop contributing countries that have confirmed participation in the exercise include Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“Other contributing and/or participating countries involved in the exercise are Algeria, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda,” he added.

Col Michael Kabango who is commanding the Ugandan Contingent said, “By the close of the exercise, our troops will be better skilled on crises response, managing the Challenges and Constraints of a deployed mission, adapting to a mandate change, and setting conditions for long-term solutions. They will be better actors in stability operations. (NMG)