The Three Legs Consortium was registered under the Companies Act, Laws of Kenya, in Nairobi, Kenya in 2018. It is a research organization, think tank, and meeting place for views and ideas. It is concerned with national security as configured in the three sources of national power as represented in its logo. Within the sources of national power, the Consortium is interested in Diplomacy, its relations with national security, foreign policy issues in their African perspective, its role in the Grand Strategy of states generally, and specifically in its African contexts, the issue of national strategic histories and their custodians, and other issues ejusdem generis.
While the Consortium’s main preoccupation is with analyses of the strategic level of national security policy making, it is also concerned with the other levels – especially operational – in its analyses of the problems of implementation of national security policy. Its research output touches on the areas of conflict management in Africa, national security policy and strategy formulation and implementation, the role of the Intelligence Community [IC] in national security policy decision making, formulation, implementation and coordination of grand strategy, foreign policy in Africa, constitutional aspects of national security, and the broad areas of the international and regional relations of Africa, especially the East African Community – EAC – region.
The Three Legs Consortium’s associates are drawn from academics and practitioners of the three sources of national power: Diplomacy, Military, and the Economy. It works in the framework of Working Groups, each related to an important aspect of the themes the Consortium is concerned with. Although this kind of arrangement was interfered with during the Covid days, the current operational WG - on Diplomacy and National Security in Africa – has been running since April 2021. Its output, Strategy Unbound: Essays on Contemporary African Diplomacy and Strategy will be published in October 2023.
The Consortium is also dedicated to nurturing future African scholars and leaders in these diverse areas. In this pursuit, its Working and Discussion Groups that inspect academic, policy and emerging issues in these areas include new academic members from the universities, and outstanding post-graduate students. It also organizes thematic Symposia, Seminars, and Conferences in which new areas of interest, and outcomes of old ones are discussed. Besides these, the Consortium also publishes books, Occasional Papers, Working and Discussion Papers, and Journals, of which Diligence: African Journal of Diplomacy and Intelligence is the pioneering one. Besides these, the Consortium is launching a forum for debate and discussion in the broad areas of concern. These debates will be carried in Agora: a forum for debate, an online forum to be launched in the first quarter of 2024.