India, Africa Launch AIKEYME Maritime Exercise

• 25 Mar 2025

On 24th March 2025, the Indian Navy announced initiatives to bolder cooperation with the continent and the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). India and Tanzania will co-host the maiden Africa-India Key Maritime Engagement (AIKEYME), a multilateral naval exercise aimed at enhancing interoperability and maritime security cooperation with African nations.

• The AIKEYME exercise, meaning ‘Unity’ in Sanskrit, is the first-ever large-scale maritime engagement between India and African nations, underscoring growing naval collaboration in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
• The six-day event, co-hosted by the Indian Navy and the Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF), will take place in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in mid-April 2025, with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurating the exercise.
• Eight African nations—Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, and South Africa—will join India and Tanzania in this initiative aimed at improving maritime security.
• The Harbour Phase will include Tabletop and Command Post exercises on piracy response, seamanship training, and Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) operations to strengthen coordination in countering maritime threats.