It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon, involving a variety issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest, youth unemployment etc.) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that not only do we need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as will be shown, important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). What is more, we also need to appreciate that, even if these gaps represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritized, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.