The Vice President of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue has visited military barracks in Malabo to supervise the state of the buildings and infrastructure there.

The Vice President dedicated his time to check the state of more than a dozen camps in the capital of Equatorial Guinea.

These check-ups by such a high-ranking official are quite telling. The authorities of Equatorial Guinea have reasons to worry about the security situation in the country.

One of the reasons is the consequences of the Bata explosion that took place on 7 March 2021 in the armoury of the Gendarmerie and the Nkuantoma military barracks.

According to official data, 107 people died as a result of these explosions, which also caused extensive damage to residential areas and the military compound. More than 700 people were injured, including women and children in army barracks and residential areas near the military complex.

The government described the situation as catastrophic and called for international support to meet humanitarian needs. Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue has carried out these inspections weeks after he called on the country's top military commanders to avoid the repetition of incidents such as the disaster in Bata as much as possible.

Another purpose of the inspection is to enhance the dynamism of the national military corps in order to comply with the programs drawn for this year by the ministries of Defense and Security.

The aim is to prepare the Armed Forces to respond effectively to any threat to national integrity.

According to military experts and conflict observers, the security situation in Africa is deteriorating, as the various armed groups and terrorist sells become better trained and equipped.

The asymmetrical response of the different states to this threat, – forcing the armed groups out of certain territories by stronger players, resulting in terrorists flooding weaker countries, – creates power voids and imbalanced security structure on the continent, which poses serious risks to Equatorial Guinea.