International Relations experts are asking government to review its method of appointing ambassadors to represent Ghana in other countries.
The experts argue that a comparative analysis of the efficiency and merits of career diplomats in representing the country’s interest largely outweighs that of politicians occupying diplomatic positions in missions outside the country.
In a public assessment by the CDD on Ghana’s Foreign Policy and Security Sector – Governance under President Akufo-Addo for the past year, Research Fellow at the Legon Center for International Affairs and Diplomacy, Dr Amanda Coffie said “the current High Commissioner to South Africa’s appointment and certain proclamations that he made led us to now question some of these appointments, as to whether we need more career diplomats or political appointments”.
The International Relations analyst continued, “I must say that under the President, we have more political appointees, even to the point that the new deputies in London and in Bourn are political appointees which is not the norm. The deputies usually are career diplomats and so we’re seeing a trend.”
Thirty- five out of Ghana’s existing fifty-four serving envoys are politicians, leaving the number of career diplomats to just eleven. The country recently added three new missions in the United Arab Emirates.
Dr Coffie however said academia can step in to train and orient the appointed politicians on their core mandate.
She told a gathering at the Center for Democratic Development’s (CDD) public discussion that “it is the President’s prerogative to decide who he appoints, but I think that what happened with our High Commissioner to South Africa tells us that after you have appointed these people, there is some training and some orientation that they need to go through. And this is where the academia can come in for training and orienting these people”.
Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com/103.5FM/Papisdaf Abdalla
