Simeone Azoska
Geostrategist & Human Security Analyst
When Washington releases a new National Security Strategy, most African capitals issue polite statements and move on. That would be a mistake this time.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) is not just another bureaucratic document. It is the clearest codification yet of a harder, more transactional American posture, one that links foreign policy to domestic revival, measures alliances in cash and minerals, and declares that “the era of mass migration must end” while elevating border security to a primary element of national security (United States Government 2025). It is, in effect, an America First world order written into doctrine.
For a country like Ghana, democratic, stable, mineral-rich, and sitting at the hinge between an evolving Sahel and an anxious Atlantic, this matters enormously. The question is whether Ghana chooses to be a pawn in someone else’s game, or a mid-sized power that plays the new order to its advantage.
What does America’s New Doctrine portray? Interests First, Burden Sharing, Minerals and Borders
The 2025 NSS is built around a few blunt ideas.
First, domestic revival is the organising principle. Foreign policy is framed as an extension of US economic and social repair, re-industrialisation at home, energy “dominance,” reshoring of supply chains, and protection of American jobs and social cohesion. Foreign partnerships are justified only insofar as they deliver for the US economy and internal security (United States Government 2025).
Second, security is about burden sharing and distance. The US intends to avoid the large, open-ended deployments that defined Afghanistan, Iraq, and earlier African missions. The Africa Command strategy explicitly stresses “burden sharing” and protecting the US homeland as its central task (United States Africa Command 2025). In practice, Washington wants partners who can police their own neighbourhoods while the US provides training, equipment, and occasional kinetic or intelligence support.
Third, economic security is redefined around critical minerals, energy and data. Recent US policy and commercial guidance increasingly emphasise securing reliable access to lithium, bauxite/aluminium, manganese, graphite and other inputs for the green and digital economy, as well as gas and nuclear projects (EITI 2022; Trade.gov 2025; SFA Oxford 2023). African states are seen less as aid recipients and more as potential nodes in re-routed supply chains that bypass China and Russia (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2025).
Fourth, Africa is a competitive arena, not a charity case. US officials talk openly of countering Chinese and Russian influence through energy and infrastructure deals and “friend-shoring” manufacturing (Atlantic Council 2025; New Security Beat 2024). This is neither a Cold War-style ideological crusade nor 2000s-era democracy promotion; it is raw competition for resources, markets, and alignments.
Finally, migration is securitised. The NSS explicitly ties uncontrolled migration to social strain, distorted labour markets and national security risk, ending what it calls an era of “mass migration” and casting border control as a core security function (United States Government 2025). That framing will resonate not only at the Mexican border but also in US visa policy toward Africa. For Ghana, this is not an abstract shift. It lands on a real country, with real vulnerabilities and assets.
Ghana’s Strategic Position: Rich in Minerals, Ringed by Fire
Ghana enters this new era in a paradoxical position, relatively vulnerable on the security periphery, attractive in the economic core.
On the economic side, Ghana is exceptionally well placed. It is already a major gold producer and holds significant reserves of manganese and bauxite; recent work on the energy transition and critical minerals has highlighted commercial-scale lithium and substantial graphite deposits (EITI 2022; UNECA 2017). These are precisely the minerals that power electric vehicles, battery storage, solar panels and the wider energy transition. Add offshore oil and gas from the Jubilee and TEN fields Jubilee alone producing around 100,000 barrels per day and Ghana becomes a critical energy-minerals hub on the Gulf of Guinea (Tullow Oil and African Energy Chamber 2025; Ministry of Energy 2022–2024; Petroleum Commission Ghana 2024).
On the security side, the picture is less reassuring. A decade of instability and jihadist expansion across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has pushed violent extremist groups steadily southwards. Analysts now openly warn that the strength of organisations such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) could enable a de facto “caliphate” zone extending toward coastal states (Reuters 2025; ODI 2023; Atlantic Council 2025). Ghana has not suffered a terror attack on its soil, but internal assessments and independent studies describe it as a vulnerable coastal state, exposed through sensitive northern borders, local grievances, and cross-border criminal networks (WACCE 2022; WANEP 2023).
It is partly in response to this threat that Ghana helped launch and host the Accra Initiative, a regional security mechanism aimed at preventing Sahelian terrorism from spilling into coastal states, built around intelligence-sharing, joint patrols and multinational operations (European Council on Foreign Relations 2020; Institute for Security Studies 2023). The Initiative’s coordination is housed in Ghana’s National Security Secretariat, affirming Accra’s role as a security convenor (Birikorang and Abdallah 2023; Aidoo 2025).
This combination, thus, mineral richness, energy potential, democratic stability and frontline geography, makes Ghana exactly the kind of “capable, reliable partner” envisaged in the US NSS (United States Government 2025). But it also makes Ghana a high-value object in a wider struggle; between Washington and Beijing over supply chains; between Western and Russian influence in security; and between coastal stability and Sahelian volatility.
The danger, to borrow Fanon’s spirit without his despair, is that Ghana becomes an object in other people’s strategies rather than a subject of its own history.
Opportunities and Risks for Ghana in the New Order
The new US posture opens three broad avenues of opportunity for Ghana, and at least as many serious risks.
- A Minerals and Energy Bargain on Better Terms; or Worse
If Accra is strategic, US and allied demand for secure, “friendly” sources of lithium, bauxite, manganese, graphite and gas could underwrite a generational transformation in Ghana’s industrial base. Ghana is already debating a national critical minerals framework; a growing chorus of African and international analysts has urged West African states to use the current boom to build regional value chains rather than export raw ore (EITI 2022; Afripoli 2022; UNECA 2017).
But in a world of intensifying great-power competition, the opposite is also possible; accelerated enclave extraction, opaque infrastructure-for-minerals swaps, and politically captured contracts that mortgage strategic assets for short-term fiscal relief (UNDP 2022; ODI 2023). The record of African resource booms from oil in the Niger Delta to copper in Zambia is a warning, not a blueprint. - Regional Security Leadership with Clout; or Entanglement
From a pragmatic point of view, Ghana’s leadership role in the Accra Initiative and ECOWAS makes it a natural partner for a US strategy that wants Africans to “handle their own security” while the US provides training and support (Atlantic Council 2025; United States Africa Command 2025). Done well, this can mean more equipment, better intelligence and greater diplomatic clout for Accra.
Done badly, it risks entangling Ghana in open-ended frontier wars, importing rivalries between external patrons, US, EU, Russia, Gulf states, and turning northern Ghana into a militarised buffer zone rather than a zone of development. The withdrawal of military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from ECOWAS, and their pivot toward alternative security arrangements, has already fractured the regional security architecture (Birikorang and Abdallah 2023; U.S. Institute of Peace 2024; KAIPTC 2024). Any Ghanaian strategy must assume a fluid, contested regional environment in which legitimacy, not just hardware, is in short supply. - Migration and the Ghanaian Diaspora, A Closing Window
If the NSS treats mass migration as over, Ghana must expect tighter US visa regimes, more enforcement, and fiercer domestic debates in Washington about African migration. That will affect students, health workers, professionals and irregular migrants alike and, by extension, remittances, skills acquisition and diaspora investment (United States Government 2025; White House 2024).
Yet constraints can be turned into structured bargains. How? Skills-mobility partnerships, circular migration schemes and diaspora investment frameworks that give Washington predictability while giving Ghanaians secure channels for study, work and entrepreneurship abroad (UNDP 2022; White House 2024). The US has already signalled an interest in debt relief and economic partnership frameworks that acknowledge African agency, as seen in its support for African Union membership of the G20 and its rhetorical emphasis on “African leadership and partnership” (White House 2024). Ghana should not leave this to generic African diplomacy; it should negotiate a Ghana-specific deal.
A Ghanaian Doctrine: “Ghana First, Multi-Aligned, Rules-Based”
What would a serious Ghanaian response look like? At minimum, it needs to be more than reactive. It requires a doctrine simple enough to communicate but robust enough to discipline decisions across governments. A useful shorthand is “Ghana First, Multi-Aligned, Rules-Based.”
Ghana First; Define the Non-Negotiables
The US NSS is unapologetically America First. Ghana must be equally clear about its own non-negotiables:
• Territorial integrity and border stability, northern and maritime;
• Constitutional and democratic continuity;
• Economic transformation anchored in value-added industry, not raw exports;
• Energy security at affordable cost;
• Social cohesion in vulnerable northern and coastal communities.
Every major foreign deal whether with the US, China, the EU, Gulf states or others , should be screened against these interests. If a security arrangement inflames domestic tensions, if a minerals contract undermines long-term value-addition, if a data-centre deal weakens digital sovereignty, then it should be restructured or refused, regardless of the external partner’s flag (UNDP 2022; UNECA 2017).
Multi-Aligned Non-Alignment: Friendly to All, Dependent on None
In a world of revived blocs, the temptation is to choose a camp. That would be a historic mistake for Ghana.
A more intelligent strategy is what some analysts call “multi-alignment”; cooperate deeply with the US where interests converge, such as counter-terrorism, maritime security, digital infrastructure, higher education, minerals governance, while maintaining serious, transparent relations with China (infrastructure, manufacturing), Europe (governance, climate finance), India and the Gulf (capital, pharmaceuticals, logistics) (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2025; New Security Beat 2024). The aim is diversification, where no single partner should control core energy assets, ports, telecoms backbones or critical-mineral value chains.
Rules-Based at Home: Predictability as Power
In the new US NSS, “reliable” partners are less about their rhetoric and more about their predictability; can they honour contracts, manage debt, and keep politics from tearing up signed agreements (United States Government 2025; Trade.gov 2025)?
Here Ghana has an underused strategic asset: a reputation, imperfect but real, for legal continuity and democratic alternation (WACCE 2022; WANEP 2023). That asset should be protected fiercely. The more predictable Ghana’s regulatory frameworks and dispute-resolution mechanisms, the more sway it will have in negotiations. Investors, whether American or Chinese, will pay a premium for that predictability.
This implies, among other things, political discipline on natural-resource contracts; transparent parliamentary scrutiny of major security agreements; and strengthened institutions for managing sovereign debt and contingent liabilities (UNECA 2017; Ministry of Energy 2022–2024).
From Doctrine to Policy
Doctrine only matters if it shapes concrete policy. A Ghana-First, Multi-Aligned, Rules-Based stance could translate into at least four clusters of action.
First, rewrite Ghana’s Minerals and Energy Bargain
Ghana should move rapidly to publish and implement a Critical Minerals and Energy Strategy that:
• Designates lithium, bauxite, manganese, graphite and rare earths as strategic minerals;
• Sets minimum local processing and value-addition thresholds (for example, refining bauxite to alumina, processing lithium into battery-grade chemicals);
• Restricts the transfer of strategic infrastructure, rail to mining regions, bulk terminals, grid-critical substations to arrangements that preserve Ghanaian control or golden-share rights;
• Uses open, competitive bidding that invites US, European, Asian and African firms into the same tenders, rather than granting exclusive zones to single partners (EITI 2022; Afripoli 2022; Trade.gov 2025; SFA Oxford 2023).
On energy, Ghana’s emerging gas and oil hub anchored on Jubilee and TEN and expanded through projects like Jubilee South East, should be taken advantage of, to develop petrochemicals, fertilisers, LPG distribution and gas-to-power for local industry, not just exports (Tullow Oil and African Energy Chamber 2025; Petroleum Commission Ghana 2024; Ministry of Energy 2022–2024). Here, US capital and technology can be part of the solution, but only under conditions of strong local-content rules and meaningful technology transfer (New Security Beat 2024; UNECA 2017).
Second, make Security Cooperation Work for Ghana’s North, Not Just Others’ Maps
On security, Ghana should lean into its role as a regional security anchor but on its own terms.
That means:
• Consolidating the Accra Initiative as a platform that blends kinetic operations with serious investment in borderland development, youth employment and climate-resilient livelihoods in northern Ghana and neighbouring regions (WACCE 2022; WANEP 2023; Birikorang and Abdallah 2023; UNDP 2022).
• Using any upgraded Ghana–US strategic dialogue to secure support for border surveillance, intelligence analysis and maritime-domain awareness, while drawing clear red lines against permanent foreign bases or opaque Status of Forces Agreements (United States Africa Command 2025; Aidoo 2025).
• Coordinating security assistance so that US, EU, UK and UN programmes reinforce rather than duplicate one another, and remain nested under Ghana’s own strategy rather than donor project cycles (European Council on Foreign Relations 2020; KAIPTC 2024).
External partners, including Washington, increasingly accept that violent extremism in the Sahel is spilling toward the coast and threatens global interests (AP News 2024; U.S. Institute of Peace 2024; ODI 2023). Ghana should insist that any external support strengthens its own capacities and regional diplomacy rather than turning its territory into a chessboard.
Thirdly, negotiate a Ghana–US Mobility and Skills Compact
If US migration policy is hardening, Ghana should not simply absorb the shock. It can propose a structured Ghana–US Skills and Mobility Compact that:
• Creates predictable pathways for Ghanaian students in STEM, health and other strategic fields in exchange for commitments on temporary visas, post-study work and options for return;
• Establishes pilot circular-migration schemes for nurses, engineers and technicians, with joint training curricula and mutual recognition of qualifications;
• Encourages diaspora investment in Ghana’s tech, energy and agro-processing sectors through tax incentives and dedicated diaspora bonds (White House 2024; UNDP 2022).
Such an approach would acknowledge US domestic pressures while preserving Ghana’s long-term interest in skills acquisition and remittances. It would also complement EU and UK mobility frameworks, diversifying Ghana’s options.
Finally, build a Strategic Communications and Analysis Core Inside the State
In a world where narratives justify interventions, Ghana cannot afford to let others tell its story. A small, professional Strategic Analysis and Communications Unit under National Security and Foreign Affairs could:
• Continuously analyse documents like the US NSS, China’s white papers and EU strategies, translating them into implications for Ghana
• Coordinate Ghana’s messaging in Washington, Brussels, Beijing and multilateral fora, emphasising its role as a democratic anchor, security provider and responsible minerals steward (Atlantic Council 2025; UNECA 2017);
• Monitor disinformation campaigns that might seek to exploit domestic tensions as a pretext for external pressure (WANEP 2023; WACCE 2022). This is not propaganda. It is the sober work of statecraft in an era of information weaponisation.
From Object to Subject
Ghana’s first post-independence leaders understood that security and development were inseparable from how the great powers organised the world. Kwame Nkrumah’s non-alignment was an attempt, was aimed to be a subject rather than an object in global politics. Today’s environment appear less ideological and more transactional, but the underlying challenge is the same.
The new US National Security Strategy does not doom Ghana to subservience, nor does it guarantee partnership. It simply clarifies the terms on which the world’s most powerful state intends to operate, thus, interest-driven, competition-minded, minerals-hungry, migration-averse and impatient with weak or unreliable partners (United States Government 2025; United States Africa Command 2025).
In that world, small and mid-sized states have three options. They can cling to nostalgia and be swept aside. They can sell themselves cheaply and be discarded when convenient. Or they can do the harder work of internal discipline defining interests, building institutions, diversifying partnerships and force others to deal with them as strategic actors.
For Ghana, the choice is stark but simple. To paraphrase Fanon, the country can refuse to be the wretched object of others’ designs, and instead insist on its own authorship. That will require a Ghana-First, Multi-Aligned, Rules-Based strategy , not just on paper, but in every concession signed, every base negotiated, every mineral contract approved. America has written down its doctrine. It is time Ghana wrote, and lived by, its own.
References
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