João P. Coelho highlights the maritime dimension of regional security. According to Coelho, current challenges of globalised maritime trade such as piracy, pollution, illegal trafficking of humans, drugs or weapons, and resource management need to be properly addressed, because otherwise some could develop into hard security threats. Piracy should therefore not merely be regarded as a maritime event to be contained at sea, but as a symptom of broader problems such as extreme poverty and political instability. The author argues that maritime insecurity is always created ashore, and is too serious to be dealt with by the security sector alone.

This study is part of a series of three regional studies on African Approaches to Maritime Security published by the FES peace and security network.