Following growing terror attacks in the West African subregion with the latest one being the killing of eight Ghanaian tomatoes traders, the country is seeking assistance to combat the terror threats head on.
In view of this Ghana is to sign a Defence cooperation agreement with Ukraine to help build capacity of the nation’s security and intelligence agencies.
This was part of several other bilateral discussions held between Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa who is on a working visit and his Ukrainian counterpart.
Speaking to Journalists on February 25, Mr Ablakwa said, “We have also looked at the potential of having a defense cooperation agreement. As two countries, we have very strong armed forces. As you do know, Ghana’s celebrated armed forces is one of the UN’s top troop-contributing nations.
They have tremendous experience in maintaining peace, maintaining law and order, and carrying out peacekeeping operations across the world. We believe that we can cooperate in that area. We are also looking at establishing an electronic warfare center so that we can deal with the threat of terrorism that we face in our region, which is now the epicenter for global terror.”
“So we are looking for international partners to build our capacity and our ability to neutralize these terrorists. And we see in Ukraine a worthy partner. And so we have discussed that,” he stressed.
The Foreign Affairs Minister further announced that, “We have discussed the need to have an agricultural cooperation. Ghana is positioning itself to be an agrarian hub, and we want to be the food basket of our region. And we have discussed the potential in having full cooperation with Ukraine in that regard.”
In respect of Education, Mr Ablakwa noted that “Before the invasion, we had a lot of Ghanaian students here, in excess of 200, who were particularly studying in the field of medical science and engineering. Because of the invasion, a lot of them returned home and had to be reintegrated. We want to revive that educational cooperation so that we can continue to have more of our medical doctors and engineers here.”
According to him, “we can also receive a lot of Ukrainians who want to have a different exposure, different environment. We have also strong universities, some of the best in Africa, like the University of Ghana, which was established in 1948. So, we have discussed the need to revive our educational cooperation.”
Source:Fiilafmonline/3News
