First plenary meeting in Paris, on 15 and 16 April 2026, under the Gabon and France co-presidency of the G7++ Group of Friends of the Gulf of Guinea (G7++ FOGG)

• The first plenary meeting for this year of the G7++ Group of friends of the Gulf of Guinea (G7++ FOGG), a political forum dedicated to maritime security and safety issues in this region, was held under the co-presidency of Gabon and France.
• The exchanges made it possible both to identify a common assessment of the maritime security issues and challenges in the region, and areas for improvement with a view to fully operationalising the Yaoundé Architecture.
• The next plenary meeting will take place in Libreville, Gabon, by the end of this year.

These two days of work brought together, under the co-presidency of the Ministers for the Armed Forces of Gabon and France, and representatives of the States, regional organisations and partner organisations of the G7++ Group of Friends of the Gulf of Guinea (G7++ FOGG):

• States of the Yaoundé Architecture: Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone;
• G7 States: Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and associated States: Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Portugal;
• Regional organisations: Economic Community of West African States, Economic Community of Central African States, Gulf of Guinea Commission;
• Other organisations: INTERPOL, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, European Union.

Participants discussed the major maritime security challenges faced by regional States and their partners nowadays, in a context where the evolution of maritime traffic places the Gulf of Guinea at the heart of global maritime routes: illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU fishing), piracy and armed robbery and organised crime including, first and foremost, drug trafficking, as well as smuggling of migrants.

They noted that the increase in maritime traffic, combined with offshore oil extraction activities, further heightens the risk of pollution, including that caused by hydrocarbons, requiring the strengthening of measures to prevent, detect and combat marine pollution.

While welcoming the progress made, particularly in terms of information exchange and coordination of operations within the Yaoundé Architecture, which was the subject of in-depth discussions, the members of the G7++ Group of Friends of the Gulf of Guinea called for the full implementation of the recommendations from the audit conducted in 2024 by the UN agencies.

The participants concurred on the need for Yaoundé Code of Conduct signatories to designate national focal points to support this approach. The participants also concurred on the need to continue the work undertaken for the full operationalisation and regional appropriation of the Yaoundé Architecture, recommending for this purpose to:

• define the conditions necessary to guarantee sustainable sources of financing for the centres;
• better coordinate the many beneficial initiatives of international partners in the capacity building of the Yaoundé Architecture’s States, particularly through training programmes, to ensure their full adequacy with the needs;
• continue the development of an increased maritime domain awareness, particularly by strengthening exchanges between the Multinational Maritime Coordination Centres (MMCCs) of the Yaoundé Architecture and the Maritime Operations Centres (MOCs) as well as with partner States’ centres, particularly the MDAT-GOG (Maritime Domain Awareness Trade – Gulf of Guinea);
• consider a revision of the Yaoundé Code of Conduct to more precisely define the responsibilities of the States of the Architecture as well as of the regional organisations;
• to consider the designation of an authority responsible for representing the Yaounde Archictecture at the political level.

Convinced of the interest in continuing to deepen these subjects within the Yaoundé Architecture and the G7++ Group of Friends of the Gulf of Guinea, the States and organisations represented in Paris decided to assess the progress made at the plenary meeting which will take place in Gabon by the end of 2026.

Source :  DGRIS