Atlantic Council

Senior fellow Rudolph Atallah and J. Peter Pham, director the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, were featured speakers at the 5th Africa Command Academic Symposium, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, July 9-12.

The meeting, organized by the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) at the National Defense University, brought together academics, military officers, and senior policymakers from some two dozen African nations with their American and European counterparts to discuss ways in which the command can best support peace, stability, and development in Africa and to identify appropriate and methods for AFRICOM and the scholarly and policy communities to work together.

Atallah gave the conference’s keynote address, speaking on “Mapping Out Africa’s Evolving Security Environment” at the opening ceremony presided over by AFRICOM commander General Carter F. Ham. In his speech, Atallah drew upon his knowledge and experience of the continent from his twenty-one-year military career, which included tours of duty as Africa counterterrorism director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, an Air Force defense attaché in six West African countries, and director of Sub-African studies at the Joint Special Operations University.

Pham was the speaker for the symposium’s final plenary session, delivering a presentation on “US Policy and African Security: AFRICOM, CVE, and Somalia’s Challenges” as the capstone case study for the meeting’s deliberations.