As part of multi-national response to threats of militancy and insurgency in Africa, leaders from Central and West African states are billed to hold a summit next month to draft and ratify a common strategy to combat the Boko Haram insurgency.

Ghanaian president John Mahama and his Chadian counterpart, Idriss Deby, confirmed this while speaking with journalists in Accra, saying that the April 7-8 summit, for which the host country has yet to be chosen, was needed to devise an effective strategy for combating the rising threat of insurgency in West and Central Africa.

Mahama chairs the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, while Deby heads the Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS.

“Single-handedly, no country can overcome this threat and therefore through pooling our resources together …we are going to overcome this challenge,” Deby informed reporters.

Armies from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger have launched a multi-national counter-insurgency offensive to end the Islamic militant group’s six-year campaign of terror, which has claimed thousands of lives in northern Nigeria.

In recent times, the insurgent group has spread its activities into Cameroon and Niger.