Article Preview
TopIntroduction
In recent years, the issue of Defence Cooperation Agreements (DCA) between the United States of America (US) and some African countries, have attracted continuous debate in various security, academic, political and media circles (Owusu, 2018; Vergun, 2022). Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana are among the key countries that have DCA with the US. Some personalities in Africa including HE Adebowale Adefuye (former Nigeria Ambassador to the US) have criticised America on how they treat their partners with security bilateral agreements when the partners need assistance (Heusted, 2022, p27; BBC, 2014).
In Ghana, for instance, some statesmen including former President Jerry John Rawlings and a former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Brigadier General (Rtd) Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, have raised concerns about Ghana and the US Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) signed in 2018 (Graphic 2018). According to President Rawlings and Brigadier General (Rtd) Nunoo Mensah, the nature of the agreements was not in the Interests of Ghana and such agreements could offer the US the opportunity to use the country as a staging post and permanent ground for its military operations across the African continent, and also, encroach upon Ghana’s sovereignty (Awinsong, 2018).
Contrary to the above, some scholars such as Kham and Theng (2015) hold the view that in today’s increasingly complex and interdependent world, coupled with global threats to peace and security, no one entity or country has the monopoly on what it takes to fight terrorism, cybercrime and transnational organised crime alone, hence, without regional and global cooperation, fighting contemporary security threats by one country alone might not be successful. In West Africa for instance, the terrorists’ activities have become more aggravated (Kpodo, 2018). For instance, the indiscriminate Jihadist attacks on Ghana’s immediate neighbours: Togo, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast were alarming and almost at the doorsteps of Ghana which posed a serious threat to Ghana’s national security (Cook, 2019).
The research gap that inspired this study is the scantiness of literature on international defence cooperation in Africa with regard to the assessment of the benefits and challenges emanating from such accords. The research question that guides this study is “what are the main benefits and challenges associated with the 2018 US-Ghana defence cooperation agreement?” The study advances that in spite of the fact that some schools of thought advocate against the DCA due to sovereignty infringement and possibly a breach of Ghana’s domestic laws by the US (Owusu, 2018), the DCA between Ghana and the US remains crucial and indispensable in the fight against terrorism, cybercrimes and related transnational organised crimes that pose serious threats and danger to Ghana’s national security and the regional peace. In this paper, the authors seek to assess the US-Ghana DCA, based on two key areas; the benefits and challenges.