Africa needs a lot of things, especially good training for its military personnel. In Mali, outside Bamako (the capital) the EU (European Union) has established a training center for officers and troops and has 400 trainers from European armies. The training center opened in early 2013 with the goal of training about 6,000 personnel (four infantry battalions and 3,000 support troops). The EUTM (EU Training Mission) provides a ten week course and did not become fully operational until 2014.
I'm going to note that the situation is pretty bad when 10 weeks of training is considered a good thing.
When I had about 10 weeks of basic training, I was not a soldier. I was the beginning of a soldier.
I wasn't a useful soldier after my signal school of several more months.
It took a lot more training in my unit to become a useful soldier.
Yet getting this type of training could make all the difference, it seems, in Africa.
AFRICOM has a lot of work to do. It's nice to get help from the Europeans.
