At the Council on Foreign Relations in September on the sidelines of UNGA 2026, President Mahama explained why his Cabinet rejected a proposed US health compact worth about $109 million over five years. It would, he said, have required Ghana to hand over its pathogen profile and medical records, and would have barred our Food and Drugs Authority from inspecting imported medical products. He called the terms “humiliating” and said Cabinet threw the compact out in record time.
Ghanaian radio and social media have been thrilled. Here, many said, was an African leader prepared to face the West without ambiguity. The US Embassy in Accra soon replied that it had sought only aggregate data without personal identifiers, as under PEPFAR, and that America had invested $2.2 billion in Ghana’s health sector since 2012. The door, it said, remains open.
Having spent time in both civil society and state security assessing questions of intelligence and national security, I read this exchange with both admiration and caution. Cabinet drew the right line. But a refusal, however eloquent, is not yet a policy. Sovereignty is not proven by what a government declares rather by what it can sustain, verify and apply consistently.
What was on the table
The negotiating text has not been published, so honest analysis must separate three kinds of claim.
Confirmed by the President: the pathogen profile, medical records, counterpart funding and an exemption from FDA inspection.
Reported by sources: a 25-year data term on a five-year programme; a US pledge subject to congressional approval against a binding Ghanaian commitment of about $70 million; broad US discretion over the data, including use by American pharmaceutical firms; and a first draft presented in November 2025 with a one-week deadline.
Contested: whether “medical records” meant patient files or aggregate indicators. That is now the central factual dispute.
Reading the Embassy’s answer
The Embassy’s reply was diplomatic in tone and pointed in substance. It ignored the word “humiliating”, letting the President’s language look like the escalation. It framed the US phase-out as being “in alignment with” Ghana’s push for health sovereignty, a polite way of saying Ghana is sovereign and should now fund it. Its $2.2 billion figure quietly answered the President’s description of $109 million as a pittance. And by responding publicly at all, it signalled that its real audience was the Ghanaian public, not the government.
Its strongest point is precedent: aggregate reporting under PEPFAR has run for years, and accountability to Congress is a legitimate need. But an Intelligence Analyst reads a denial for what it leaves out. The statement was silent on the 25-year term, commercial use of the data, the FDA exemption and the asymmetry of obligations. A narrow denial that skips the specific charges tells you where Washington feels exposed.
Each side’s case is weaker than it sounds. The Embassy compared specimen sharing to cooperation against Ebola, but that analogy cuts both ways. The Ebola response left West African governments complaining about samples taken abroad and not returned. In 2007, Indonesia refused to share H5N1 flu samples over a similar imbalance, and that refusal produced WHO’s influenza benefit-sharing framework. The Ebola precedent is an argument for guaranteed benefit-sharing, which is precisely what is in dispute.
“No personal identifiers” is also narrower than it sounds. Long-term access to health information systems can allow re-identification without names, and an assurance about the content of data says nothing about access to systems or its duration. Yet the asymmetric funding language is probably standard US drafting, because the executive cannot bind future congressional appropriations. The asymmetry is real for Ghana; the motive may be mundane.
An important gap worth noting. The first draft reportedly came with a one-week deadline; the Embassy speaks of months of good-faith negotiation. Both can be true. We do not know whether Cabinet rejected the original draft or a softer negotiated text. The two sides may be describing different documents.
The real bargain
Many Ghanaians suspect a hidden agenda or conspiracy. There is likely none, only a transactional bargain in which health data and biological material are among the things being bought. It has three layers. The declared layer is outbreak detection and accountability to Congress, both legitimate. The structural layer is aid as leverage, as when health funding was reportedly linked to critical minerals in Zambia. The strategic layer is access without obligation: bilateral terms secure pathogen samples outside the WHO system that guarantees supplying countries fair access to the resulting vaccines. The United States has left the WHO and will not join that system.
Population-scale health data can reveal disease burden, resistance patterns and genetic characteristics. There is no evidence any partner has misused such data, and we should say so without ambiguity. The decisive issue is irreversibility. Troops can be withdrawn and agreements terminated; on the contrary, data and specimens cannot be recalled. Access also accumulates. Ghana granted operational access through joint military medical exercises and territorial access through the 2018 Defence Cooperation Agreement, and neither has been reversed. The compact would have added informational, biological and regulatory access, each less visible and harder to undo.
Dignity and its price
A clear “NO” has value. It sets a floor for other African states, strengthens Ghana’s hand and builds domestic support for a harder line on data and regulation. But words like “humiliating” and “pittance”, spoken to an American audience, make quiet renegotiation harder and invite Washington to show what its absence costs. The phase-out has already begun.
Rhetoric does not buy antiretrovirals. The shortfall already touches HIV testing, antiretroviral supply and laboratories. If clinics face inventory depletion next year, critics will say principle was paid for with patients’ health. The durable model is firm in substance and measured in tone: refuse specific terms, publish the reasons, fund the alternative and keep a counter-offer on the table. That shows the West something more persuasive than defiance: that Ghana can manage without the money.
The idea of leaders who face the West also carries moral force only if it applies to every partner. Bluntness toward Washington with silence toward Beijing, Brussels or private technology vendors is practicing geopolitical positioning, not principle.
Publish the text
Only the published text can settle the dispute. Some reasons for secrecy are legitimate: negotiating drafts and Cabinet papers are confidential by convention, and publishing the other party’s draft unilaterally could damage Ghana’s standing as a negotiating partner. Others are convenient. Publication would show whether the final text matched the President’s description, and would expose the terms the Embassy avoided. Ambiguity serves both sides, which is exactly why the public should insist on disclosure.
There is a middle path. The government could release the contested clauses, brief Parliament’s Health and Foreign Affairs committees in closed session, or propose a joint release of the final draft to test the Embassy’s confidence in its own account. Any of these would move the debate from competing narratives to evidence.
From refusal to doctrine
African responses have varied. Botswana signed a narrow HIV-focused deal while funding most of it. Zimbabwe refused and is losing US funding. Zambia reportedly won removal of the contentious terms. Kenya signed, but a court suspended implementation. Terms, leverage and fiscal room drove each outcome, not courage or its absence.
Ghana should turn one decision into standing policy:
- Define in law what Ghana will share: aggregate indicators freely, de-identified data under strict agreements, identifiable records never.
- Table a counter-offer: audit access through Ghanaian-hosted dashboards with independent verification. The Embassy says it wants only aggregate data; this takes it at its word.
- Keep the FDA sovereign and require binding benefit-sharing for any pathogen shared, with no term longer than the funding.
- Require parliamentary approval. The 2018 defence agreement went to Parliament; a health data agreement of greater long-term consequence should too, with every annex published.
- Ring-fence domestic financing for HIV, TB and malaria commodities, with public reporting on inventory levels. This is the centrepiece, not an afterthought.
- Apply the same rules to every partner and every digital-health vendor.
- Build a regional floor through ECOWAS and Africa CDC, or neighbours’ deals will expose the sub-region’s data anyway.
The work of sovereignty
We should be realistic. Ghana’s leverage is modest, dozens of countries have already signed, and Washington may ignore a counter-offer. Domestic financing and regional coordination are therefore the real safeguards. Our answer need not be anti-American. It can be selective sovereignty: generous on surveillance, training and aggregate data; firm on identifiable records, uncompensated specimens and control of our own regulator.
The President voiced a real grievance, and the Embassy gave a careful reply. Neither settles the matter. The text, the law and the budget line will. Dignity declared at a podium must be defended in the pharmacy, the laboratory and the negotiating room. That is the work of sovereignty, and it has only begun.
By Nana Attobrah Quaicoe
Nana Attobrah Quaicoe is an Intelligence and National Security Analyst and former Director General of the Bureau of National Intelligence (2022–2025). He writes on national security, intelligence sector reform, risk and integrity assessment, and institutional governance in the Ghanaian context.
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