ACADEMIA Letters MARITIME SECURITY THREATS IN AFRICA Brigid Gesami Introduction There is no one recognized defnition of the term “maritime security” in the literature (Bueger, 2014) . According to Kraska and Pedrozo (2013), the idea is not defned as such in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the frst – and still the most important –international document recognizing the need for collaborative approaches to maritime security, which was adopted in 1982. Piracy and armed robbery, maritime terrorism, illegal trafcking by sea, i.e. drugs trafcking, small arms and light weapons trafcking, and human trafcking, global climate change, cargo theft, and so on, are all challenges to “Maritime Security.” These threats are always changing, and they may take the form of a hybrid: an interrelated and unpredictable combination of conventional and irregular warfare, terrorism, and/or organized crime. The seas are more important in today’s economy, enabling all nations to participate in the global marketplace. More than 80% of the world’s commerce goes by water, establishing a worldwide maritime connection. Containers carry about half of the world’s commerce in terms of value, and 90 percent of general goods. Maritime security is best accomplished by combining worldwide public and private maritime security operations into a unifed efort that tackles all maritime threats (NeuralGuard, 2021). According to NeuralGuard (2021), to reap the advantages of globalization, several na- tions have invested heavily in maritime infrastructure, containerized commerce, energy sup- ply chains, information technology-driven freight movements, and procedures that accelerate monetary operations. The world is now in an unusual state, characterized by the illogical acts of forces that encourage terrorism as a way of separating the international community and undermining world stability in general. Nonetheless, “sea power is essential to the globalization process in a manner that land Academia Letters, September 2021 Corresponding Author: Brigid Gesami, gesamib@gmail.com Citation: Gesami, B. (2021). MARITIME SECURITY THREATS IN AFRICA. Academia Letters, Article 3564. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3564. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0