Africa-Press. Ghana has rejected a bilateral health agreement with the United States, a source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters, in the latest hurdle to the Trump administration’s efforts to repair foreign aid.
The source said President John Dramani Mahama’s government had objected to clauses that required the exchange of sensitive health data. The same case has led to the failure of talks with Zimbabwe this year, and prompted a court to suspend the implementation of the Kenya agreement pending consideration of a case brought by a consumer protection organization.
In September, the Trump administration announced a new strategy, America First, for global health, calling on poor countries to play a greater role in fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and polio in their countries, and gradually transitioning from aid to self-sufficiency. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was dissolved earlier this year.
According to government foreign aid data, the United States disbursed $219 million in foreign aid to Ghana, of which $96 million is earmarked for the health sector, for 2024, a year before the Trump administration cut foreign aid.
The source said the agreement, which the two sides began negotiating last November, would have provided for $109 million in U.S. aid to the health sector over five years. It was unclear how much Ghana was expected to pay.
“Negotiations and dealings were pretty normal at first, and then the pressure increased significantly, especially in the end,” the source said. The source added that Washington then set April 24 as the deadline for the completion of the negotiations, but Accra decided not to approve the proposal.
The source explained that Ghana informed the Trump administration of its position. As of Monday, the State Department had signed 32 agreements under the U.S. Global Health Strategy, with a funding value of $20.6 billion, of which $12.8 billion was from the United States and $7.8 billion in joint investment from recipient countries, a U.S. spokesman said. The spokesman confirmed that Washington expects to sign additional memorandums of understanding in the near future.
