This special issue explores security threats, governance gaps, and regional responses in the Gulf of Guinea, the Southern African Cone, East Africa and other areas near African waters – regions pivotal for the understanding and advancement of maritime governance off Africa’s coasts.
These waterways, marked by strategic geopolitical significance and complex maritime challenges, offer a unique learning curve for African decision-makers striving to enhance governance frameworks. The Gulf of Guinea, still plagued by piracy and robbery incidents, illegal fishing, and environmental degradation, underscores the importance of cooperative security mechanisms and resource management. The strategically consequential waters of the southern subcontinent, occupying the confluence of the Atlantic, Southern, and Indian Oceans, exemplify the potential and importance of maritime trade, generally, and the necessity of securing such a vital international trade route around the southern tip of Africa as instability threatens in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the wider Indian Ocean to the north.
The significance of these African maritime domains is transnational. The substantial attention directed towards Africa by the governments of Norway and Denmark, through the implementation of their respective Africa strategies initiated in late 2024 (Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2024; Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2024), is particularly noteworthy. In addition to the evidently heightened focus, Norway, the primary contributor to the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) task force in West Africa comprised of Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo, launched its dedicated Sahel strategy in 2021. Similarly, since 2016 Norway has funded the southern African FishForce programme, training officials to enforce laws against fishing crimes (Nelson Mandela University, n.d.); the Danish government, meanwhile, is heavily engaged in West and East Africa through its Peace and Stabilisation Fund (PSF), contributing to both civilian and military engagements. Lastly, Sweden is significantly invested in the continent through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), which launched its strategy for regional development cooperation with Africa in 2022 (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2022). All three countries are focused on strengthening regional and interregional African governance through increased funding, presence, dialogue, and cooperation. With this trend and the growing scholarly emphasis that accompanies it, it appears apposite to connect African maritime research areas and practices to the readers and scholars in the Nordics and broader West.
This special collection highlights opportunities for shared learning and collaboration to aid the navigation of complex maritime, geopolitical, and environmental issues, contributing to, and benefiting from, understandings of maritime governance in the Gulf of Guinea, off the Southern Cone, and other African waters. This is understood as an opportunity to draw comparative insights and to examine shared challenges across regions in maritime governance, which have become key topics for academics, policymakers, and practitioners engaged with global military and security studies. The collected articles offer much for those interested in or involved in capacity-building, illegal fishing, global trade, governance challenges and opportunities, and environmental issues – precisely the kind of material useful for the reader looking for an in-depth introduction to key maritime themes, maritime security governance, and the realities that African decision-makers face across the continent.
Raison d’être
The collection of articles is one of the outputs of the third jointly-hosted conference on maritime security, organized by the Royal Danish Defence College (RDDC), the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa of Stellenbosch University, and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre. In keeping with the African focus of the annual event, panels focused on developments off West and East Africa, particularly the waters off Somalia and the Red Sea, and the importance of the waters off Southern Africa.
This special collection responds to increasingly important questions of governance security founded on the principle of maritime security as a necessary condition for sustainable and economically productive ocean use (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2016; United Nations, 2015; World Bank & UN DESA, 2017; European Union, 2023). Further, maritime security itself has become an influential field of study, with academic scholarship increasingly shaping governmental and practitioner responses to maritime threats and vulnerabilities (Bueger, 2015; Bueger & Edmunds, 2017; Klein, 2011; Till, 2018; Kismartini et al., 2024, p. 10). In a specifically African context, the continent has a coastline of approximately 30,500 km with 38 coastal and 6 island states that dominate or border major maritime trade routes between Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Africa’s extensive maritime landscapes, and the living and non-living resources that belong to them, constitute a stock-and-flow resource of global importance (Prause, 2024, p. 5).
Maritime matters, then, are crucial to African prosperity, governance, and life. But this requires a critical perspective on the bad news, too (Bueger & Edmunds, 2017; Bueger & Edmunds, 2024). The contributions in this special collection bring into perspective progress and initiatives in the Gulf of Guinea, the nature and impact of the spate of armed attacks in the Red Sea, and the threat posed by armed non-state actors; it addresses state responses to the security situation, and the context from which piracy and hijackings may emerge. Maritime security dynamics in both regions have consequences for Southern African waters, so far spared the threats seen in the energy-rich Gulf of Guinea and the strategically located Horn Region, adjacent to busy shipping connecting Asia and the Arabian Peninsula (Bueger & Stockbruegger, 2022; Mohammed & Dalaklis, 2024; Midlen, 2025).
None of the maritime challenges addressed are new. And it is worthwhile asking why attempts by African decision-makers to address these challenges, even to pre-empt them, have had such limited effect. Through comparative analyses, case studies, and policy insights, this collection seeks solutions to this question, reflecting on the lessons to be drawn from the regions discussed here and the responses Africa’s maritime nations can make to develop resilient maritime governance structures, foster sustainable economic growth, and ensure security.
Below, we will first outline key maritime terms and concepts relevant to fully understanding what follows; maritime governance and capacity-building, for example, reoccur throughout the edition. After the section on terminology, we describe the current maritime landscape along African coastlines; the introduction concludes with a detailed exposition of the various papers and their principal contributions.
Key Maritime Terminologies
Maritime Security Governance
At the heart of the problem facing decision-makers lies the issue of good governance, particularly maritime security governance. Practicing maritime security governance poses challenges, such as the question of whether the high seas lend themselves to robust governance regimes. In addition, the following complexities are at play. The intricacies of maritime spaces’ vertical and horizontal dimensions raise complex questions of law and sovereignty, making it difficult to apply the law (Khan, 2026). These difficulties create weakly governed ocean territories, given the varying capacities of actors to effectively extend the rule of law (Khan, 2026). Thus, it is difficult to claim securitisation of the seas through effective security governance, as some maritime territories do not readily lend themselves to security arrangements to fend off threats and mitigate vulnerabilities. The span of actors involved in maritime security governance also holds disparate perspectives on the efficacy and relevance of UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), tend to house dissimilar capacities to enforce good governance, and often neglect their responsibilities to promote good maritime security governance (Sperling, 2022, p. 74).
One finds an abundance of literature grappling with what, precisely, maritime security governance entails. Perez (2022, p. 70) offers a useful outline, writing of the capacity to “promote cooperation between all the actors involved and the collective responsibility to contribute to maritime security by accepting compliance with common rules: a governance regime over a global space, universal application and defined by ethical criteria.” This view must be reinforced by both normative and institutional development and the creation of governance regimes that apply to spatial criteria; the latter ties in with the interspatial, transnational, and interjurisdictional dimensions that define ocean governance. Such spaces all pose their own challenges. Meeting these challenges promotes the quality of maritime security governance, whether national, regional, or international, on the high seas. If they are not adequately met, risks to national goods (territorial waters), club goods (regional maritime orders), common pool resources (subsea cable networks), and public goods (freedom of navigation, effective search and rescue) arise (Sperling, 2022, p. 75).
Maritime security goods are inherently valuable for the maritime sector, for governments, and for individual consumers, whether above or below the seabed. By the 21st century, the oceans had gained prominence as an economic frontier, holding untapped value and potential for development, growth, prosperity, and progress (Mandrup & Vreÿ, 2015). These potentials and challenges reinforce the notion of quality maritime security governance for the safe and sustainable use of the world’s oceans, including harnessing its future potential to sustain humanity (Jouffray et al., 2020, p. 45).
African Maritime Security Governance
Instability in African waters directly impact the rest of the world. Together, the theoretical lenses employed here (maritime security, institutionalisation and cooperative security) and empirical cases drawn from specific African maritime regions, allow this special collection to rectify a curious neglect of a highly consequential subject – maritime security governance.
A lack of attention paid to naval power, maritime trade routes, ocean governance, and sea-based vulnerabilities have furthered a perception of Africa as “seablind”: subject to a cognitive and institutional bias that privileges land-based perspectives in security thinking. In recent years, however, new policies, plans, and strategies to map its role in, and its nations’ determination to address, the importance of the continent’s ocean territories have been drawn up (Mandrup & Vreÿ, 2015; Bueger & Edmunds, 2017; Bueger & Edmunds, 2024; Till, 2018). By increasing safety and security for those operating in these waters, a range of projects has been initiated to promote cooperation and develop programmes.
But maritime insecurity remains a complex and wicked problem with no credible single approach for its rectification. Flexible, tailored responses to these complex demands are required, without which the potential for disruption to the sectors that collectively depend on maritime security throughout the continent remains.
This convergence of geographic and institutional exigency necessitates the cooperation of African actors. Cooperation is a question of optimizing the ways and means of strengthening the maritime security governance of countries in their respective jurisdictions, both ashore and at sea (Perez, 2022, pp. 66–67). While there is precedent for cooperative capacity building in maritime security in the continent, cooperation has proven difficult to implement in practice; it has even been rejected outright on occasion, leaving well-intentioned structures, strategies, projects, and institutional frameworks that fail to be implemented (Walker, 2020).
The continent and its coastal and island states may serve as a large geographical laboratory for several maritime related programmes. There are moves to specifically foster cooperation, address capacity building, and bring the continent’s nations, regions and bodies more into step with both the debates and the practical execution of strategies, programmes, and partnerships. Prominent examples of strategies and charters to regulate and promote maritime security include the African Integrated Maritime Strategy 2050 instituted in 2012, the Lomé Charter of 2016, the Djibouti Code of Conduct of 2009, the Revised African Maritime Transport Charter of 2010, and the Yaoundé Code of Conduct (2013). Recent multinational initiatives include the Africa Maritime Forces Summit of 2025, held in Mauritius and attended by 32 African countries (Matibe, 2025), and the African Union’s work to establish a Combined Maritime Task Force to address piracy in the Gulf of Guinea (African Union, 2025a). Much work at the continental and regional levels is undertaken to promote and coordinate the institutional and regulatory underpinnings of maritime security governance in Africa (African Union, 2025a, 2025b; International Maritime Organization, 2026).
The productive use of the ocean relies on effective maritime security governance – the systems, policies, institutions, and practices that guide the management, regulation, and sustainable use of oceans, seas, and maritime resources. Addressing issues such as robbery, illegal fishing, environmental protection, resource management, and economic development, governments, international organizations, private sector entities, and civil society must conduct a number of different activities in concert.
Environmental sustainability, a goal and practice closely related to resource management, fishing regulation, mineral extraction, the monitoring and management of shipping routes, and other economic activities tied to the blue economy, is increasingly central to initiatives seeking to protect marine ecosystems and biodiversity.
These and other activities are conducted in the context of a number of international legal agreements of central importance to maritime security: UNCLOS, for example, which outlines nations’ rights and responsibilities in maritime spaces. Another relevant initiative, the African Union Governance Strategy and Implementation Plan (2025–2035) is now active; focused on key areas such as ecosystem management, climate resilience, marine pollution control, transboundary conservation corridors and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, it consequently touches on the maritime sphere (African Union, 2025b, p. vi). Furthermore, effective maritime governance requires close stakeholder coordination and collaboration among governments, industries, and communities to ensure the equitable and sustainable use of maritime resources.
As this special collection shows, several other initiatives and frameworks have been developed across Africa to enhance stakeholder and inter-state coordination. It must be acknowledged that there have been difficulties in their implementation in practice.
Geopolitical Context: Near-African Waters
The Gulf of Guinea, the Horn of Africa region, the Red Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean are often cited as insecure maritime zones (Vreÿ, 2024, p. 71). Regional threats, persistently related to the maritime consequences of weak landward governance, emanate from both deliberate and unintentional behaviour (Ginga, 2020, p. 196). The African setting of weak landward governance, reinforcing weak maritime security governance, also plays out amid growing geopolitical tensions that affect African littoral states. This means that African maritime affairs and governance must adjust to the broader, ever-shifting geopolitical developments to which they are connected.
The quest for footholds saw large military installations (including naval facilities) emerging in Djibouti as well as several other regional players jockeying for position (Ashine, 2024, p. 3). To the west, the competition among several countries, principally Russia, China, the USA, France, and Turkey for a presence in the Gulf of Guinea has been regionally influential (Singh, 2023, pp. 190–193; Andersen, 2026, pp. 1–6). Further south on the Atlantic coast of Africa, the United States outbid their Chinese rivals to help Angola rehabilitate the Lobito Corridor to transport minerals to the Lobito harbour for export (Jura et al., 2024, p. 205). Chinese ambitions, through their One Belt One Road Initiative (particularly the Maritime Silk Road through the Indian Ocean), directly target African countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania among them, with maritime (coastal) landing points on existing or new harbours on the Western Indian Ocean (Khalema, 2021, pp. 73–76).
Africa must also contend with its own intra-continental threats and vulnerabilities spilling into offshore zones. Here, the insurgencies in Mozambique and Somalia are salient examples of land-based armed conflicts disrupting economic activities in the Gulf of Aden and the Mozambique Channel, thereby adding to a deteriorating, more competitive external strategic environment. The Israeli attacks on Gaza, igniting Houthi revenge attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, have further disrupted the maritime economics of trade and negatively impact both the continent and its use of its oceans (Olsen & Jones, 2024). Attending to Africa’s maritime security landscape and exploring measures to enhance governance thus entails confronting multiple risks following from state and non-state interventions and disruptions, often while seeking to mitigate increasing natural and environmental risks. It is in the context of the troubled face of maritime security governance that African decision-makers craft security architectures in an attempt to regulate and mitigate negative influences and risks. And it is in this context, also, that the contributions to this special collection fill a geographic and temporal lacuna in Africa by focusing on three specific maritime regions: West Africa, Southern Africa, and East Africa.
These matters are pivotal. Africa’s ocean territories are vast. It is correct that debates on ocean use, maritime threats and vulnerabilities, and the quest for better maritime security governance should reflect the continent’s importance. Responsible ocean use, and the foundations of the security on which their profitable and sustainable use depends are a focus in what follows. The continent’s ocean landscapes and its very position on the globe form part of this discussion: the interconnected nature of the world’s extensive human, terrestrial and ocean resources contribute to the continent’s relevance within the global maritime security agenda.
Themes
The articles that follow largely deal with two themes in particular.
The first two investigate maritime governance and maritime security from a comprehensive perspective. The three following articles critically examine Africa’s maritime domain and the principal decision-making entities in four regions: Eastern Africa, the Gulf of Guinea and Southern Africa (with a particular focus on South Africa).
Afua Lamptey of Leipzig University and research fellow from Kobe University, Elsie Tachie-Menson, examine the critical issue of gender equity in maritime security, highlighting the underrepresentation of women and the unique challenges they face in this traditionally male-dominated sector. Their article critiques the limited scope of the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) agenda, noting its failure to encompass maritime governance despite its four guiding pillars, and examines gaps in international maritime laws and security frameworks that prioritize state security over gender considerations. Using a cultural-norms perspective, it argues for integrating maritime concerns into the WPS Agenda and implementing concrete, actionable policies to advance women’s roles and wellbeing in maritime security (Lamptey & Tachie-Menson, 2026).
The senior maritime security consultant Pascaline Alexandre considers the pivotal role of strategic communications as a geopolitical tool in maritime security, highlighting its influence on shaping policies, fostering regional cooperation, and promoting collective ownership of security initiatives. Defined as a critical link in policymaking and constituency-building, strategic communications enhance stakeholder alignment, manage public perceptions, and drive support for maritime security efforts. The paper seeks to illustrate the instrumental role of strategic communications in enhancing coordination and building a unified approach to addressing maritime security challenges (Alexandre, 2026).
Katja Lindskov Jacobsen and Amanda Møller Rasmussen from the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and Carina Bruwer from the Endangered Wildlife Trust, propose a novel analytical approach to crime complexes as a basis for rethinking maritime governance in response to growing threats such as drug trafficking, piracy, and illegal fishing. The article argues for reconsidering not only policy solutions but also the analytical frameworks applied to these issues. Drawing on cross-continental research from the Gulf of Guinea and the Horn of Africa, it identifies two key insights: the interconnected nature of maritime crimes and their dependence on land-based drivers. These findings underscore the importance of integrating maritime and shoreline governance to develop effective strategies for combating maritime crime and strengthening governance from coasts to the high seas (Jacobsen et al., 2026).
François Vreÿ from the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa at Stellenbosch University and Mikkel Andersen from the Royal Danish Defence College examine the dynamics between maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea and the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP). Their article emphasises the need for actors in African littoral states to collaborate through CoPs to address complex maritime threats more effectively. Drawing on traditional CoP theory and existing literature on CoP in maritime security, they investigate how enhanced collaboration among diverse actors, and the incorporation of local knowledge within these communities, can contribute to shared regional goals: sustainable fisheries management, more effective protection of critical infrastructure, and improved regional cooperation in maritime security (Andersen & Vreÿ, 2025).
Mark Blaine and Michelle Nel from Stellenbosch University and the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (SIGLA) explore why maritime diplomacy is a vital yet underutilised tool for advancing state, regional, and global maritime security interests. Their article argues that cooperative maritime diplomacy offers significant potential for Africa, given the continent’s limited naval capabilities and consequent reliance on collaboration. African states engage in initiatives such as naval exercises, energy partnerships, and capacity-building programmes, exemplified by frameworks like AIMS-2050, yet maritime diplomacy remains underemphasised – particularly in Southern Africa. Focusing on the Cape Sea Route (CSR), the article highlights South Africa’s strategic role in protecting sea lines of communication (SLOC) and advancing the African Blue Economy, underscoring the need for stronger legal frameworks, regional cooperation, and maritime-focused strategies (Blaine & Nel, 2026).
We hope the collection of articles serves as an introduction to African maritime security and its governance, highlighting the challenges and opportunities facing the field. Similarly, we hope the insights presented will provide a unique learning curve for African decision-makers seeking to enhance maritime security governance frameworks. Sea-blindness, lack of implementation, and questions of capabilities continue to constitute key challenges for African security governance, and vigorous, robust academic and policy debates are needed to foster the development required to create a prosperous future for Africa and to realise the potential of the African blue economy.