Ghana was not born in a vacuum. Our modern state was forged in a long and complex relationship with Britain and the wider Western world, from the colonial administration, legal system and English official language to the parliamentary democracy we have sustained since independence. This history cannot be one to be erased or dismissed as it forms the foundation on which this country stands.
That relationship has never been only about institutions. It has shaped the physical face of Ghana. In August 2006, for instance, Ghana signed its first compact with the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation, worth approximately US$547 million, built around poverty reduction through agricultural transformation and covering agriculture, transportation and rural development. Nearly 67,000 farmers were trained, hundreds of kilometres of feeder roads were rehabilitated, agribusiness centres were established, and rural communities gained investments in water, schools, electricity and banking. In August 2014, the second compact, the Ghana Power Compact, was signed, with the United States committing up to US$498.2 million to transform the electricity sector, aimed at creating a more sustainable power system and stimulating private investment, with Ghana contributing US$37.4 million for a total of about US$535.6 million.
In defence and security, the partnership is equally concrete. In March 2026, the European Union and Ghana signed a Security and Defence Partnership, the first of its kind between the EU and an African country. Under the European Peace Facility, the EU handed over critical military equipment worth 50 million euros to the Ghana Armed Forces, including electronic warfare systems and explosive ordnance disposal capabilities, to strengthen Ghana's ability to protect its territorial integrity and contribute to regional stability.
In human development, the American President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme has invested more than US$204 million in Ghana's HIV response since 2007. In the 2024 financial year alone, 143,799 people were tested for HIV, 23,376 people living with HIV received antiretroviral treatment, and treatment success, measured by viral load suppression, reached 90 percent. A USAID-supported supply chain programme raised the availability of the most common adult and paediatric antiretroviral medicines from 84 percent and 18 percent in 2021 to close to 100 percent and above 80 percent respectively. And this relationship is not merely an aid relationship. U.S.-Ghana goods and services trade was estimated at US$4.6 billion in 2025, and Ghana remains eligible for AGOA benefits, which give Ghanaian exports preferential access to the American market.
On trade and investment, five years after the UK-Ghana trade partnership agreement was signed, bilateral trade has grown to about 1.6 billion pounds, up 12.5 percent from 2024. In June 2026, the two countries signed the UK-Ghana Growth Partnership, with deals worth up to 215 million pounds, including a project to build the Gulf of Guinea's first commercial-scale ship repair dry dock in Takoradi, expected to create 430 direct jobs, 30 percent of them reserved for women.
These and many other benefits, remain key reasons I am not opposed to Ghana expanding her international relationships. Anyone with common sense can see that these relationships have delivered measurable development results.
And that is exactly why I cannot treat the Foreign Affairs Minister's announcement that Cabinet has decided Ghana will formally apply to join BRICS as just another piece of political news. The government's stated reason is diversification, reducing reliance on traditional partners, accessing more trade and investment opportunities, and advancing industrialization. My question is simple. Diversification from what, and into what?
My training and practice in monitoring and evaluation forces me to look at this decision through a number of specific questions. What is the problem we are trying to solve? What is the intervention? What are the expected outputs and outcomes? Where is the baseline? What are the risks? What are the measurable benefits? What are the unintended consequences? What is the counterfactual?
This is not a mechanical professional habit. The core logic of monitoring and evaluation is that if a decision-maker cannot clearly explain how an intervention will produce change, then either the intervention has not been properly thought through, or it has been thought through but the government does not want to explain it to the public. A policy proposal that cannot answer the most basic question of what problem it solves is not something a nation should bet its foreign policy direction on.
The government says BRICS gives Ghana more options. I accept that options can have value. But an option is not automatically an advantage. If BRICS is expected to improve access to capital, show us the financing terms, and how they differ from those of the West we have known. If it is expected to accelerate industrialization, show us the industrial projects. If it is expected to improve knowledge and technology transfer, show us the technologies and the transfer mechanisms. If it is expected to open markets, show us which Ghanaian products will enter which markets, under what conditions, and with what projected employment effects.
The IMF's latest review of Ghana's programme reported substantial progress in macroeconomic stabilisation, while noting that continued reforms will be important to create space for Ghana's development needs while maintaining debt sustainability. You see, whether one likes the IMF or not is beside the point. The institution is part of Ghana's economic reality right now. So is the World Bank, whose commitments to Ghana stood at about US$7.425 billion as of June 2026, covering education, market connectivity, energy and agriculture, among others. The situation is same with the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the development and investment ecosystems around them.
Hence, with the NDC government's current pursuit, I am particularly worried that Ghana may drift from multi-alignment into bloc alignment without fully appreciating the difference. As we've always been, Ghana can trade with China and maintain relations with America. Ghana can attract Indian investment and deepen cooperation with Europe. The danger begins when our foreign policy becomes so entangled in competing geopolitical blocs that we start making decisions according to the expectations of one camp or another.
That to me is wanton international prostitution which is quite risky to navigate. I am convinced this government's proposed BRICS application carries risks that deserve far more honest scrutiny than their "diversification" talking point has allowed.
The first is perception of geopolitical alignment. Washington and European capitals will not read this as a neutral act of broadening partnerships, because BRICS has evolved from an economic acronym into something closer to a political counterweight. The bloc's New Delhi Declaration in September 2026 explicitly condemned unilateral sanctions as violations of international law, a move that poses blatant and a direct challenge to a central instrument of American and European foreign policy. When Ghana applies to join a grouping that positions itself this way, it is not simply adding a new trading partner but signalling alignment with a platform that China and Russia have increasingly steered towards countering Western influence; whatever Ghana's own intentions may be.
The second risk is more tangible: diplomatic friction over Russia. BRICS membership criteria emphasize good relations with all members and opposition to unilateral sanctions, which means Ghana could face pressure to take positions on Russia-related issues that diverge from those of our traditional partners. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not hypothetical. The bloc has already drawn India into co-signing statements condemning US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, a departure from India's usual reluctance to name powerful actors in multilateral settings. Ghana, with far less diplomatic weight than India, would have even less room to manoeuvre.
Then there is the question of Western confidence in strategic sectors. Ghana even from examples given in this article, has long benefited from Western investment in infrastructure, mining, energy and telecommunications, but if it begins favouring Chinese or Russian firms in these areas without competitive safeguards, Western investors could perceive greater political risk. The European Parliament has already moved to screen foreign investments in trans-European transport and energy networks specifically because of concerns about Chinese and Russian influence. Those same concerns would logically extend to how Western firms view Ghanaian projects if Ghana's strategic alignment shifts.
Intelligence and security cooperation raise a more immediate sensitivity. Ghana has built close security ties with the United States and the EU, including the 2018 defence cooperation agreement with Washington and the March 2026 Security and Defence Partnership with Brussels, which came with 50 million euros in military equipment. Western governments share intelligence and sensitive capabilities only with partners they trust to keep them out of rival hands. A deeper strategic relationship with China or Russia could make some Western governments more cautious about what they share with Accra.
Aid and development relationships would also become unnecessarily politically complicated. Ghana remains deeply embedded in Western development architecture, from the IMF programme to World Bank commitments worth billions. Our uncle Kwesi Pratt has already raised the practical question of whether BRICS membership would actually change anything, given that Ghana would still need World Bank and IMF endorsement for many forms of financial support. A confrontational posture toward traditional partners could make those relationships harder to manage, even if membership itself does not terminate them.
Trade consequences matter too. The US-Ghana goods and services relationship reached about US$4.6 billion in 2025, and the EU being Ghana's largest trading partner overall, accounting for roughly 17.4 percent of imports and 11.3 percent of exports. If relations with Western capitals deteriorate, Ghanaian exporters could face complications in markets they cannot easily replace. The UK-Ghana trade partnership alone has grown to about 1.6 billion pounds, and the AGOA preferences Ghana currently enjoys from sound policies under the NPP's President Kufuor, are not guaranteed forever.
The biggest strategic danger, however, may not be any single one of these risks but the cumulative pressure to choose sides. The fact remains that joining BRICS should not be pursued as a substitution strategy for exiting other blocs, and Ghana must recognise there will be pushback from our traditional partners who are watching closely. The danger is not BRICS itself, but Ghana being pressured to make decisions according to toxic and volatile bloc politics rather than our own national interest, until the compass that should guide foreign policy points not to Accra but to whichever capital is watching most closely.
My recommendation to the John Mahama administration is really simple. Ghana has enormous unfinished domestic business, and the government knows it, because they wrote the promises and heralded same across Ghana. The galamsey crisis still demands measurable solutions, with the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources himself describing it as “an existential threat to Ghana” even as his own secretariat reports arrests, seizures and destroyed equipment that have not yet restored the rivers and forests. Youth unemployment stands at 21.9 percent, nearly twice the national rate, with almost two million young Ghanaians aged 15 to 35 neither in education, employment nor training, and in Greater Accra the figure climbs to 31.9 percent.
Those are not abstract numbers but data on the young man in Wa who has sent out forty applications and received not even a rejection mail, and that young woman in Kasoa who finished her apprenticeship two years ago but still cannot raise 1,500 cedis for a sewing machine.
The NDC campaigned on a reset agenda, on making Ghanaians feel the recovery in their pockets. Since taking office, the 24-hour economy which promised three shifts for each job, is still stuck in budget documents and parliamentary debates. There is still no clear national framework for realization, no new industries, no employment statistics tied to the promise, and no clear budget line supporting it. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, and galamsey keeps swallowing our rivers. When the domestic scorecard is weak, turning to the international stage for a diplomatic headline becomes a convenient substitute. But a foreign policy headline is not a domestic deliverable.
So when the government now speaks of a reset through foreign policy, all we Ghanaians have every right to ask whether the reset is reaching our homes, because foreign policy cannot become a convenient escape route from domestic delivery. No diplomatic membership can substitute for real delivery of manifesto promises upon which the NDC and John Mahama were handed power. No BRICS summit can employ our unemployed graduates and most certainly, no international communiqué can put food on a struggling family’s table.
I do not want Ghana to become anyone's geopolitical trophy, not America's, not China's, not Russia's, not Europe's, and certainly not BRICS'. I want Ghana to become Ghana's own success story.
When a government struggles this visibly with delivery at home, why should the people trust it to make the right call for Ghana in a geopolitical contest it has not explained to us yet?
I mean a weightier decision with geopolitical consequences like joining BRICS should go to a referendum. The reason is not whether the Constitution requires it, but that political ethics require it. Ghana's relationship with the West is not an old flame that can be cut off at will. It runs through the machinery of the state. The benefits from the West cannot be reduced to some abstractions. They are jobs, remittances from peaceful integration into Western countries, medicines, roads and various enablers to the ordinary Ghanaian. Putting those relationships at risk through an under-argued BRICS application is not a decision some cabinet should make alone.
What is more troubling is what the timing and the method reveal about how this government thinks. Using a BRICS application to distract from undelivered campaign promises is a betrayal of the mandate the people gave.
If the government truly believes BRICS is good for Ghana, it should have the courage to let the people decide. A referendum is not a vote of no confidence in the government. It is the responsible thing to do for Ghana's future. When the United Kingdom held a referendum in 1975 on whether to stay in the European Community, and again in 2016 on whether to leave the European Union, nobody treated it as an attack on the government's authority. It was a democratic confirmation of a direction with historic consequences.
Ghana's relationship with the West carries the same weight. Letting everyone who benefits from that relationship, the farmers, the patients, the students, the exporters, the workers, have a say in whether they want to risk it is the bare minimum of democratic legitimacy. A cabinet can manage the day-to-day of foreign policy, but it cannot decide a nation's historical direction on its own.
As a development practitioner and monitoring and evaluation professional, I am not asking the government to abandon BRICS. I am asking the government to engage and justify the need, properly. Give us the baseline figures, the theory of change, the risk assessment, economic projections, the human development projections, the technology and information transfer framework, the employment projections, the assessment of the impact on our existing partnerships, and finally, the monitoring framework with indicators by which Ghanaians can judge, five years from now, whether this decision worked. And if it does not work, give us the exit strategy.
Ghana has every right to make new friends. But before we rearrange the furniture of our international relationships, we must remember who has been sitting at our table, what they have contributed, what we have gained, what we still need from them, and what exactly the new guests are bringing.
We should never be so desperate for a new table that we forget the nourishment we received from the old one. We cannot behave like profane Essau who for a morsel of meat, sacrificed his birthright.
Ghana must diversify intelligently, not impulsively. Ghana, true to our non-aligned position, must engage everybody, but belong to nobody's geopolitical camp.
Above all, every foreign policy decision must answer one question. How does this make the life of the Ghanaian better? And that essentially, is the question I am asking. Not as a spectator, but as a citizen.
Thanks for reading!
Michael A. Sarfo-Kantanka
Human Development Practitioner | Monitoring & Evaluation Professional
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