Ghana’s Ports Need More Than New Scanners

The latest directive from President John Dramani Mahama today on Ghana’s ports should be understood as part of a developing chain of events, not as an isolated response to one troubling incident.

On September 10, 2026, French customs intercepted a cocaine shipment weighing nearly 3.9 tonnes at the Port of Dunkirk. The consignment had arrived from Ghana concealed in a container declared to contain plastic waste. The case immediately raised questions about how such a shipment passed through Ghana’s export-control system.

The matter quickly moved beyond the criminal investigation. On September 17, President Mahama met security chiefs and received a briefing on the investigations. At the time, 10 people, including four Customs Division officers of the Ghana Revenue Authority, were reported to be in custody while investigations continued. The President subsequently directed an inter-agency task force to produce, within two weeks, a roadmap for preventing narcotics trafficking through Ghana’s borders.

That sequence matters.
The problem at Ghana’s ports cannot be reduced simply to whether a scanner works or whether a particular officer is present. Port security is a system. It involves intelligence, scanning technology, physical inspection, risk profiling, information-sharing, institutional accountability and, critically, the people operating the system.

Reports following the September 17 meeting indicated that government would resource relevant agencies with scanners, logistics and personnel. There was also a decision to restore the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) to the joint container inspection regime and establish a Joint Taskforce to coordinate port operations.

And now comes the latest reported development: GoldBod Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi says he understands that President Mahama has directed that all scanners and personnel at Ghana’s ports be changed with immediate effect. That specific claim is being reported as Mr Gyamfi’s account of the directive, rather than as a full presidential statement independently published by the Presidency.

That distinction is important.
Changing scanners may address technological weaknesses. Changing personnel may address concerns about integrity, familiarity with established routines or possible institutional vulnerabilities. But neither measure, by itself, guarantees a secure port.

Ghana has been here before.
The 2018 port reforms reduced the number of agencies involved in routine port operations, with the stated objective of improving efficiency and reducing duplication. The current debate demonstrates the difficulty of balancing trade facilitation with national security. Recent reporting has highlighted concerns about overlapping mandates, coordination gaps and the exclusion of NACOC from joint container inspections.

The lesson should therefore be bigger than the current cocaine case.

If a scanner produces an image showing an anomaly, someone must be responsible for interpreting it. If intelligence identifies a suspicious container, that information must reach the officer who can act on it. If an agency has a statutory mandate, it must have access to the systems, technology and information necessary to discharge that mandate. And when a serious failure occurs, accountability must follow evidence rather than assumption.

There is also a human element that technology cannot replace. A sophisticated scanner is only as effective as the system surrounding it. Poor supervision, weak intelligence-sharing, conflicts of interest, inadequate staffing or failures to act on suspicious findings can defeat even the best equipment.

That is why the President’s two-week deadline for the inter-agency task force is significant. The country needs more than another announcement. It needs a workable architecture for port security, with clearly defined responsibilities, measurable standards and consequences when those standards are not met.

The immediate objective is obvious: prevent Ghanaian territory and ports from being exploited as transit points for narcotics and other illicit goods.

The longer-term objective is equally important: restore confidence in the institutions responsible for protecting Ghana’s borders while keeping legitimate trade moving.

A port is not secure because it has scanners.

A port is secure when intelligence reaches the right people, technology is properly used, suspicious cargo is stopped, agencies work together, legitimate businesses are not unnecessarily obstructed, and those entrusted with the system know that failure will be detected and investigated.

President Mahama’s latest measures therefore deserve to be judged by what happens after the announcements.

The real test begins when the new equipment arrives, when personnel are reassigned, when NACOC returns to joint inspections, when the task force submits its roadmap—and when Ghana must demonstrate that the reforms have actually closed the gaps that allowed the recent events to happen.

Ghana does not simply need safer ports. It needs a port-security system that works.

Michael Agbesi Kelly