By NATION REPORTER
PRESIDENT Hakainde Hichilema has called on Africa and the world at large to embrace and explore ways of enhancing intelligence capabilities and information sharing to manage security challenges.
President Hichilema implored Africa to forge mutual civil-military relations between the civilian and military sectors by being accountable to the people and ensuring they operated within the rule of law.
President Hichilema made the call when he officiated at the Conference of the “Africa Centre for Strategic Studies” at Taj Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka yesterday. “Our fundamental role as a government is to ensure the continuation of peace and stability so that our economic agenda of providing livelihoods to our citizens is not disrupted. To that end, we urged the participants to be alive to the increased threats of terrorism and extremism, as they create fear and instability that can hinder economic development. We have always maintained that instability anywhere is instability everywhere,” President Hichilema said.
He said he was delighted to have officiated at the summit which comprised of participants from several countries across Africa and beyond who were meeting to discuss, among other things, how to manage peace and stability and how these factors relate and are critical to the economic sustainability of our countries now and in the future. “We recognised the fact that without strong political leadership, it would be difficult to achieve security goals and therefore promised to support our military and security services, to attain their objectives,” he said. He expressed profound gratitude to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies for choosing Zambia to host this important conference.
