Funding for a multinational force to combat Boko Haram insurgency in West and Central Africa remains well short of its target, an African Union official said Tuesday.
So far donors, including Nigeria, Switzerland and France, have pledged about $250 million to fund the 8,700-strong regional force, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council said after a meeting in Addis Ababa to discuss funding.
The talks followed the militia’s latest attack, which killed at least 65 people in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, Reuters reported.
The $250 million includes both previous pledges and those made during Monday’s conference, said Orlando Bama, communications officer for the African Union’s Peace and Security Council. He did not give further details.
That covers just over a third of the $700 million budget announced for the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) last year.
The task force – to be made up of regional African militaries -has yet to mobilise. Instead, national armies are tackling Boko Haram individually, but they often cannot follow the insurgents across the region’s long, porous borders.
The region threatened by Boko Haram is one of the poorest in the world, and all the countries in the task force, barring Benin, are oil producers whose budgets have been battered by falling prices.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and driven more than two million people from their homes during its six-year insurgency.
Boko Haram: Funding short fall delays MNJTF take off
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