This year, one of the biggest technical hurdles facing the Africa Endeavor 2011 (AE11) exercise participants has been to establish connectivity from the main exercise site in Banjul with the two remote sites, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria and the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Nigeria is taking the lead by providing the high frequency link using their own equipment for this vital portion of the exercise. The Nigerians have already established voice communications with ECOWAS. A back-up radio system, set up by the coalition partners, including Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States, has received a clear signal from the AU.

Africa Endeavor is an annual multilateral communications exercise focusing on technical and human interoperability and information sharing among African militaries. AE 2011 is being conducted with more than 30 African nations, as well as representatives from North America, Europe, and five international organizations. The exercise is sponsored by U.S. Africa Command (U.S. AFRICOM). The exercise began July 11, 2011, and enters its operational phase July 18.

The chairman for the Host Nation AE Committee, Gambian Navy Commodore Madani Senghore, expressed the significance of AE11 for his country, this year's host nation, the Gambia.

"I am confident that, with the equipment that we have in the Gambia, we will be able to establish radio calls to Nigeria and Ghana based on the previous AE test exercises and the present one that is happening," Senghore said. "We are able to make records of frequencies and other necessary input that we will be able to use to communicate to our sub-regional partners."

The African Union Standby Force Communications Officer, Zambian Army Colonel Wilson Chikwalamba Tembo, also spoke about the challenges involved in training across so many different cultures and languages.

"We've got Francophone countries; we have Anglophone countries, others that are Portuguese speaking and so on," Tembo said. "And each of these groups has their own way of conducting business, especially in terms of procedures in communicating. So what AE is doing is to try and bring all these together to find a common ground and come up with common standards that we should be able to use irrespective of where we're coming from, to be able to communicate effectively."

All of this hard work is clearly paying off during AE11, as people from all over Africa are engaging in animated dialogue and furthering human as well as technological communication.