Military Aid Missions and National Security Improvement in Ghana

Republic of Ghana is a West African country; a member of the Commonwealth of Nations; an African Union member; and an African UN member which sends its soldiers to UN Peacekeeping Force. Since 2017, Ghana has a total population of 26,908,262, with Total Military Personnel of 13,500, but has made plans to increase national defense. The Necessity of Military Aid is shown that although Ghana hasn’t been attacked; there have been several in the region with attacks on Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mali being perpetrated since 2015.

The attacks are evident on Gov.UK; its foreign travel advice in Ghana suggests that tourists be weary of terrorists attacks given that “While Ghana has no recent history of terrorism, groups associated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Islamic State of Libya and Islamic State West Africa (ISWA) present a threat to the wider region.” Ghana is stated to be enhancing security measures in response to threats elsewhere. The need for military aid is therefore demonstrated; Ghana has taken steps to achieve this most recently, of which was an agreement with China for the latter to help them with facilitating means to finance themselves. The Ghana news agency cites the story of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between China and Ghana, where China’s financial has a vital role in “ensuring international security” through monetary donation. Ghana has also been active in providing military aid to others and has contributed to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the principal organ providing military aid, particularly in disaster relief. It’s contribution to UN peacekeepers has also been significant as stated in a Yale paper, “Ghanaian peacekeepers have served in Africa, Europe, and Asia, and successive governments see this role as their contribution to achieving world peace.” That visualises Ghana is the top contributor in military aid, resultantly.

Ghana has invested budget on its military for aiding others and national security purposes. Ghana requires to take the four crucial considerations in decision-making process of UN peacekeeping mission: mission mandate with national interest are effective in command or not; political or ethnic situations of Ghana can be affected to the mission or not; size of troops is sufficient to the mission or not; and Ghana’s current capacities in human, financial and logistic resources to conduct the mission. Such assessment helps determining the absence of personnel, won’t have effects regarding the government’s capacity to deal with national security issues.

Since Ghana independence in 1957, military expense was fluctuated and made it almost going bankruptcy. After the 1966 coup, NLC solved the issue by lowering military budget - cancel new military hardware purchases. Instead, NLC focused on forming alliances with USA, Canada, and UK. Such plan made the percentage of military budget downed to 3.2% from 7.9% in 1972. In 1992, Ghana’s armed forces were budgeted at $105 million. Importantly, Ministry of Defence is the only authority in approving purchases of military hardwares for Ghana Armed Forces, under Public Procurement Act 663 (2003) aim to fairness and competition for public procurement, and to promote the state’s value and for money. Therefore, Ghana must ensure its budget is spent wisely, especially on military aid missions and national security improvement. Maximise the efficiency on military aid, economics, and national security investments to accumulate most benefits for every country.

First, establish the AU Force; each African member shall deploy a standard proportion of its military to the Force for military aid missions on government side which isn’t contradicted to Article 2 sub-section 4 of UNSC. With that, it boosts African nations’ relationships and recognition worldwide on all AU members.

Second, raise the size of the Forces in West Africa region to increase security in this region, then expand the troops in other African regions for joint counter-terrorist missions. Such solution makes terrorists in Africa be weakened or eliminated with united blocs, and that makes economics of African nations begun restoration, especially weaken currency and inflation the plan would be effective if all AU nations agree mutually.

Third, increase engineer troops to assist the country needed engineering services, with the exchange of allowing free visa to Ghanaian engineers for 1 year, and a Ghanaian ordinary citizen for 30 days. This solution helps enhancing infrastructures in the needed nation and boosting tourism between Ghana and the country as well.

Fourth, sanction on the country conducting illegal military intervention cut down essential resources. Therefore, Ghana believes those solutions shows investments with huge benefits in return.