
That Ghana’s global image is soaring is a fact that not even opponents of the New Patriotic Party administration can overlook or ignore.
From our leap away from the IMF programme that the previous administration of John Dramani Mahama foisted on us, through our re-engineering our wobbly economic structures to initiatives across the respective sectors to job creation, Ghana has been globally hailed as a fast-growing economy.
Our management of the COVID-19 pandemic has not only been an example to neighbours in the sub-region and across the whole continent, but also Ghana has been lauded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for our courageous fight in tracing, testing and treating of the coronavirus.
We capped all that with a success story in securing our food security goals, and scored another first in attracting global investment, with hopes for modest job opportunities for our teeming youthful population.
UN Security Council election
After having picked the sub-regional chair slot, Ghana under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has moved several notches higher to grab membership of the UN Security Council.
Particularly at a time when Ghana is becoming a fulcrum for the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) dream, the appointment of Ghana to that position is significant.
Of equal importance is the compelling challenge on the part of ECOWAS and the AU to unite in engineering structures to underpin an effective containment of the jihadist scourge that confronts most of our West African neighbours.
With Nigeria, Niger, Cameroun, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso under threat by the Boko Haram scourge, the rest of the sub-region and continent, for that matter, cannot afford to discount the larger threat to our collective existence and heritage, including the ingredient of stability that we need to live out the AfCFTA vision.
Shared glory and responsibility
The good news is that it took 15 African countries to unite in solidarity to give Ghana that push to glory. That naturally means all African states, particularly those 15 who voted to see Ghana through, also share in the glory bestowed on us.
Apart from it being a boost for continental trade, integration and unity, it is also an opportunity to responsibly prove to the international community that we can unite to fight that common enemy threatening our collective development as one continent with one destiny.
It particularly sounds refreshing, the government’s intention to use that privileged role to champion the West African security agenda by helping to address the security concerns in the sub-region and, by extension, the continent.
Global partnerships
As an emerging global partner, Ghana under President Nana Akufo-Addo has committed itself to using its experience in mediation, conflict prevention and resolution as well as reconstruction to bear on the work of Council.
As we may be aware, France has been saddled with the responsibility to contain the scourge in the West. To help tidy up the terrain, it is important that the European power is supported by enough African nations familiar with the terrain and other ingredients needed to reduce the firepower of the enemy forces wreaking havoc in vulnerable communities across the Sahel.
While we appreciate our African brothers who supported us in the bid to annex the slot, it is also our hope and expectation that all those nations would top up that commitment when it comes to putting together resources to support France and, for that matter, the international community to live out our sub-regional stability agenda.