Gulf of Guinea : New U.S. Ambassador Updated on Maritime Security

Initiatives to tackle piracy in the Gulf of Guinea are showing a marked decline although there is need for continued security. That was essentially the message that Christopher John Lamora, new U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon based in Yaounde, who was in an official visit at the Multinational Coordination Center of Zone D Maritime Area in Douala, received from Col. Sylvestre Fonkoua Mbah, Head of the center on April 12, 2022. The Ambassador was accompanied by Michael Obryon, Director of U.S. Embassy Branch Office in Douala and the U.S. Assistant Defense Attaché, Burt Estes.
Statistics show that before the implementation of Zone D activities, there were more than 50 attacks per year. But after the implementation the figures have hardly reached 20 per year. According to Sylvestre Fonkoua Mbah, Head of Multinational Coordination Center of Zone D Maritime Area of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), since the implementation of Zone D activities there has nevertheless been a marked reduction in consideration of maritime incidents until 2022. In 2020, there were 14 attacks with just two deaths and 36 hostages. The number of private attacks dropped to 12 with one death and instead 41 hostages in 2021.
Multinational Maritime Coordination Centers (MMCC) have also been set up as zonal centers including Douala covering Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, and Cameroon (Zone D); Here, there has been 142 piracy attacks, 38 killed, 33 wounded and 197 taken hostage between 2009 and 2022. “I am coming to get to know Camero...