Korea opens three-year disaster training program for African officials

The interior ministry said Sunday it has begun a three-year program to train African disaster management officials, starting with 17 civil servants from five countries who will study South Korea's approach to climate-related emergencies.

The first course, run by the ministry's National Disaster and Safety Education Institute, brings officials from Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and South Sudan to Korea from Oct. 25 to Nov. 5. The institute is led by Moon Young-hoon. The program is scheduled to run through 2028, with each year's curriculum shaped by the participating countries' needs.

The training is designed to strengthen the five countries' capacity to handle climate disasters, which the ministry said are growing more frequent and more severe. Participants will study Korea's flood management and warning systems, practice using the ICT network reserved for disaster response, and review smart response and on-site command systems, as well as recovery work and governance.

Each delegation will also report on climate disasters and disaster management systems in its own country before drafting an action plan for applying Korean policies and techniques at home, which the participants will present before the course ends.

The program combines lectures with visits to sites where those systems operate. Participants will tour the integrated city safety control center in Sejong, flood recovery work and a natural disaster risk improvement district in Gongju, and the K-water operations center. The institute is also working with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction on international frameworks for disaster risk reduction, comprehensive risk management and early warning systems.

Over the three years, the institute plans to phase in training that reflects each participating country's disaster management conditions and needs, sharing Korea's policies, ICT-based response technology and field experience to build a basis for sustained cooperation with African countries in the disaster safety field.

"Disasters caused by the climate crisis are a task that the international community must respond to together, beyond individual countries," Moon said. "I hope this training will raise the participating countries' capacity to respond to climate disasters using Korea's disaster management experience and technology, and serve as an opportunity to expand cooperation in the disaster safety field with African countries."