Leader of the United States delegation attending the 5th Security Governance Initiative (SGI) Steering Committee Meeting in Ghana and former US Ambassador to Rwanda, Micheal Arietti, has stated that the US stands ready to assist Ghana to deal with all existing and emerging security threats.
Speaking at the turn of the United States and Ghana 5th Steering Committee Meeting of the Security Governance Initiative (SGI) at the US West Africa Regional Training Centre in Accra, Arietti said the SGI is a partnership between the Government of Ghana and the United States of America with the sole aim of improving Ghana’s security sector and enabling the conditions for national prosperity remain a priority to the US and they will not spare any effort to get the initiative fully operationalized.
Under the SGI, Ghana and the United States signed a Joint Country Action Plan (JCAP) which identified three priority areas of partnership namely: Maritime Security, Border Management and Integration, and Cybercrime and Cybersecurity. In addition, the administration of justice serves as a cross-cutting theme in the JCAP.
“The United States has engaged its SGI monitoring and evaluation team to conduct a wide-ranging stocktaking. Once we have collected that data, we will use it to collaborate with our Ghanaian partners by returning to the original JCAP and making thoughtful decisions about how best to focus our joint efforts at bolstering Ghana’s overall security sector needs,” Ambassador Arietti said during his remarks at the opening ceremony of the meeting.
US Ambassador to Ghana, Stephanie Sullivan, said at the heart of fighting the security threats facing Ghana and the United States is the effective sharing of information stressing that “exchanging information isn’t difficult but what is hard is putting information to use”.
“There is a Ghanaian proverb that says, “eti koro nko agyina”, or “One head doesn’t hold counsel”, that I think illustrates this idea nicely. One agency, acting alone and without counsel may act in the wrong way, or too late, or not at all,” Ambassador Sullivan said.
National Security Coordinator, Joshua Kyeremeh, in a rare public appearance registered the government of Ghana’s sincere thanks to the US government for its assistance through the SGI programme.
He urged the security agency representatives at the meeting to put forward all ideas they have that would be beneficial to the decision making process of government as far as the security of the nation is concerned.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
