A two-day meeting of senior officials from the peace and security cluster under the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) opened in Kigali on Thursday, October 3, as member states mull strengthening regional integration. The peace and security cluster includes Police, immigration, investigation, and correctional services.

The latest meeting follows a two-day NCIP defence cluster meeting also held in Kigali, last month, to review progress on joint defence initiatives and assess the overall status of cooperation among the member states.

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The NCIP is a multilateral development initiative established in 2013 to speed up growth in the region through improvement of infrastructure for ease of movement of people, goods and services.

According to the Head of Small Arms and International Cooperation at the Ministry of Interior, Commissioner of Police (Rtd) Vianney Nshimiyimana, the meeting is also expected to review the progress of various directives reached at the 14th Summit of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) held in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 26, 2018. The latter NCIP Summit reaffirmed regional leaders’ commitment to advancing regional integration while underscoring the importance of accelerating socio-economic transformation, industrialisation and employment creation.

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"We are also going to deliberate on ways to expedite the implementation of the already signed agreements and explore new areas of cooperation,” Nshimiyimana said.

He added; "We are going to talk about refugees and how we manage the flow of refugees, how to manage disasters, how we can combat transnational crimes including human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, and counter-terrorism, among others.”

The Northern Corridor is an initiative aimed at fast-tracking regional development through joint infrastructure, trade, and politics for a deeper integration process.

It has 14 clusters, among which Rwanda leads the "Peace and Security” pact.

Thomas Sakah, the Director of External Security at Kenya’s Ministry of Internal Security, pointed out that several instruments have been put in place to ensure that cooperation among northern corridor countries is enhanced.

Sakah said: "The main objective for the project was to facilitate a smooth flow of trade, but that cant happen without peace and security. So, our main objective is to ensure that transport, roads, right from the port to our other neighbouring countries who we do a lot of trading with, are smooth.”

"We are deliberating on aspects of how we can expand on what we already have, and improve the efficiency. We are also looking at how we can improve generally in terms of information and intelligence sharing among the security agencies within this corridor, just to ensure that our goods, right from the port of Mombassa to Kigali, or Uganda, are transferred smoothly.”

One of the key NCIP projects that featured prominently during previous meetings is the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), a flagship project aiming to connect the port of Mombasa to Kigali and Juba through Uganda. Among others, in the past regional leaders also agreed to allocate more funding for the development of centres of excellence to support creation of requisite human resource capacities needed for the implementation and sustenance of NCIP projects.