Electronic banking and e-mail commerce would usher in crime cartels which would be difficult to counter unless mechanisms for tracking and punishing offenders were established.

This is aggravated by the sophistication of new trends of crime affecting the African region, aided by the continent's weak detection and prosecution capacities to deal with well-established and highly organized transnational crime cartels with advanced technological equipment.

It notes, however, that terrorism today has changed from being a vehicle of intrastate violence to a transnational phenomenon, using mercenaries, organized crime cartels, through and into various countries.

Only determined and coordinated action on the part of the international community, especially through tighter controls on the production and selling of weapons in private hands, can curb or even suppress this trade; which feeds crime cartels and leads to violence, fear and desperation.