Africa Partnership Station

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The Africa Partnership Station is an international initiative developed by United States Naval Forces Europe, which aims to work cooperatively with U.S. and international partners in promoting maritime safety and security in Western Africa as part of US Africa Command's Theater Security Cooperation program. The APS consists of one or more naval vessels providing a persistent presence in the Gulf of Guinea and Western Africa, led by a multi-national staff. The current staff is made up of officers from Cameroon, France, Germany, Ghana, Portugal, the UK and the US, embarked in USS Fort McHenry LSD-43. HSV-2 Swift is the other current APS ship.

APS activities consist of joint exercise, port visits, professional training and community outreach with the nations of West and Central Africa. The focus is on building maritime capacity of the nations in the region and increasing the level of cooperation between them to improve maritime safety and security. The goal is to improve the ability of the nations involved to extend the rule of law out to sea and better combat illegal fishing, human smuggling, drug trafficking, oil theft and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea region.

The most recent APS deployment ran from November 2007 to April 2008. Countries visited included Senegal, Togo, Ghana, São Tomé and Principe, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. The next APS deployment, most likely aboard a French Navy vessel, is scheduled to begin in October 2008. The time in between will be covered by mobile training team visits, maritime patrol aircraft exercises and port visits by individual naval vessels.

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