North Dakota, SETAF-AF improve Togolese incident-response capacity

State Partnership Program representatives from North Dakota, officials of Togo’s National Civil Protection Agency, and civil affairs Soldiers assigned to U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa (SETAF-AF) took part in a tabletop exercise in Lome, Togo, June 11.

The TTX culminated a three-day academics portion, “Exercise Let’s Prepare 2026,” a disaster-relief training package designed to improve the Togolese government’s ability to respond to a variety of emergency scenarios. The academic portion was part of Operation Lignite Coast 2026, an overarching training experience conducted June 8-18.

U.S. instructors consisted of a team from the Peace Garden State, who were a mix of civilian state personnel and National Guard Soldiers. North Dakota and Togo have been partners through the National Guard’s SPP for over 12 years.

“Togo has been eager to learn from the U.S. military,” said U.S. Army Capt. Euston Harp, team chief for Civil Affairs Team Togo, Alpha Company, Civil Affairs Battalion, SETAF-AF. “The information these government officials have received during this training period will enable the Togolese government to improve its capacity in providing incident response and assuming greater responsibilities as a partner in the region.”

CA Team Togo’s part in the TTX involved offering key expertise and best practices to leverage core specializations in disaster response and humanitarian aid, as well as civil-military coordination and civil integration.

Harp explained that the TTX’s goal was evaluating response abilities and applying classroom instruction in a discussion-based environment, which would help identify potential planning gaps, clarify organizational roles and improve team coordination.

The TTX’s final portion consisted of groups of key leaders from Togo’s NCPA presenting solutions to three notional incidents. These scenarios included a large traffic accident on a bridge, a group of capsized, large-capacity canoes (carrying up to 60 people), and a cholera epidemic occurring in the aftermath of a flood. In composing their briefs, the teams employed the training they’d received over the previous three days. Building on the course’s content, delivering these presentations also helped prepare for a practical training exercise the groups would undergo the following week.

Sherry Adams, North Dakota state health officer and Southwestern District Health Unit executive officer, has worked in emergency preparedness and response since 2004, and she is certified by North Dakota and the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an incident command instructor. She has made 15 trips total to Africa throughout her career, having taught incident command in Benin, Ghana and previously in Togo.

“What always impresses me every time I come to Africa, is how serious students are to understand, learn and train — and they do such a professional job,” Adams said. “For example, the TTX groups took the time to make very detailed maps as part of their briefs, which wasn’t required, and that’s why I love to teach over here. By using all the right terms, the maps they drew, and the diagrams they had, they demonstrated that they truly learned … and as an instructor, it just makes you really happy when you see your students do so well.”

Adams explained that her normal job responsibilities in North Dakota are quite different, but these trips to Africa put her in her “happy place” with a break from her normal routine and the opportunity to teach emergency preparedness.

“I love planning and preparing, and when I go to a country that has very few resources and I see how they make the most of everything, it really puts everything in perspective,” Adams said.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Al Roehrich, a lead planner for the North Dakota National Guard and deputy director of the North Dakota Domestic Operations Branch, pointed out that one of the intended benchmarks with partnership programs is to strengthen them to a point where they are on “cruise control,” and that every completed event moves the program with Togo closer to that level.He also noted that North Dakota’s relationships with various Togolese agencies remain strong while collectively building partner capacity to manage both domestic and regional security.

“They always appreciate it when we come over here, but they also get the benefit of going to the U.S. in small teams to visit North Dakota to see our training and how we conduct business,” Roehrich said. “We have a lot of the same problems, especially from an emergency services perspective. They might not deal with blizzards and snowstorms like we do in North Dakota, but we both have fires and floods, so we still see a lot of the same issues. This is shared learning at the end of the day.”

Roehrich emphasized that the overall goal always focuses on building capacity and relationships with partners in Togo, particularly with the NCPA on this trip. While North Dakota’s emergency preparedness experts provided the lead content for instruction during Lignite Coast, the opportunity to confer among colleagues generally positions both sides for better success going forward.

“We always look to build upon capacity from past events and exercises,” Roehrich said. “We conduct annual exercises with all of our partner countries, and Togo’s NCPA has been a great partner in emergency preparedness and disaster response in 2026. Any time we can get partners together to talk about ways to improve, it always makes us better collectively because we also learn a lot from their best practices that we can bring back to North Dakota and possibly implement them in our own procedures.”