From 30 November to 3 December 2021 Fairview Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya, hosted the 15th CBRN CoE National Focal Points Round-Table Meeting for Eastern and Central Africa, presided over by Mr. Joseph Maina, Head of the Secretariat. The meeting was opened by Ms Silvia Bottone, CBRN CoE Programme Manager for ECA, Foreign Policy Instrument, European Commission. It assembled the National Focal Points of the participating 11 African countries, who also constitute the Steering Committee of the EU-funded Project 60 Support to the EU CBRN CoE ECA in Nuclear Security.
The Round Table meeting made an overview of engagement with partners, and recent activities within the region. As Project P60 continues to be the flagship project of the ECA CoE due attention was attributed to it. The meeting was attended also by Mr. Louis Dey, EU Regional Cooperation Officer for Eastern and Central Africa, EU Delegation to Kenya, overseeing the project on behalf of the European Commission.
Bojan Tomic, P-60 Team Leader, updated on the project status, and intended schedule for the post-pandemic period. He debriefed the NFPs on the completed activities, and on eventual need for expansion. One example is the Train-the –Trainer courses and their rollout through training for custom officers, operators and regulatory staff. In terms of the remaining activities and their implementation several venues were outlined: establishing security inspections; MoU and exchange of information on radioactive sources crossing borders; prevention of Illicit trafficking. Border crossing exercises, scenarios, locations, schedule and participation cross border took center stage.
Through a remote connection Kamen Velichkov, ISTC SPM in charge of P-60, congratulated the Kenyan hosts on the occasion of the recent participation of Kenya in the recent ISTC Governing Board meeting, for the first time, after Kenya joined ISTC. He also underlined the significance of the work with stakeholders in the context of Project – 60 and the importance of cooperation among neighboring countries for safe and secure transport of RAM. Glimpses of an advance version of a video was shown, on a real time exercise carried out jointly by DRC, Zambia and Zimbabwe in November 2021.