Security remains a topical issue when it comes to the biggest threats to stability in the Great Lakes Region. In the coming years, the Great Lakes will have to chart out a clear roadmap to combatting its current security threats. Better still, the countries that comprise the Great Lakes will need a concerted effort in developing an all-inclusive framework upon which to anchor the solutions.

First, there’s food security. The Great Lakes will have to reinvent the way they do agriculture, and the way they feed their people. This implies a rethink to the current land policies in the region. Uganda for example will have to bite hard and face its land question. Are the current farming practices and land use practices sustainable to combat issues of food security?

From food security comes the question of poverty and unemployment for the blossoming youths in the Great Lakes region. With financial security not assured, this opens a pandora of boxes with the many armed groups that operate in this region. Thus, a generation that’s not well-fed, a generation that lacks access to meaningful employment is open to radicalisation by terror and rebel groups that ply the region.

The Great Lakes must henceforth take agency and act before it’s too late. It’s agency that requires multi-players in the region, both the public and private sectors of this region. Africa Nxt Gen will soon release a paper on the implications of these emerging security issues within the region.