Ghana Turns Down USD109M US Health Deal

(MENAFN) Ghana has turned down a proposed American health assistance package worth $109 million, objecting to data-sharing requirements embedded in the agreement, a source familiar with the negotiations told media on Tuesday.

The rejection delivers a fresh blow to Washington's sweeping overhaul of global foreign aid — a restructuring that began last year when President Donald Trump returned to office and dismantled the US Agency for International Development. Its replacement, the 'America First Global Health Strategy', requires what the State Department calls co-investment from recipient governments, with the twin aims of reducing aid dependency and expanding US health innovation globally.

According to a source cited by media, Accra took issue specifically with data-sharing clauses in the five-year deal. The terms proved a red line for a country that received $219 million in total US foreign aid in 2024 — including $96 million earmarked for health — before the Trump administration's sweeping aid cuts took effect.

Pressure Mounted as Deadline Loomed
Negotiations reportedly kicked off last November, but the tone shifted noticeably as Washington imposed an April 24 deadline to close the deal. "They were pretty normal dealings and negotiations in the beginning, and then increasingly there was a lot more pressure, especially at the end," the source reportedly said.

Ghana has since formally communicated its rejection to the Trump administration. Neither a government spokesperson nor Ghana's Foreign Ministry had issued a public comment at the time of publication.

The US State Department declined to elaborate on the breakdown, offering only a measured response: "We continue to look for ways to strengthen the bilateral partnership between our two countries," a spokesperson told media.

A Growing Pattern of Resistance
Ghana is not an isolated case. In February, Zimbabwe rejected a $367 million US proposal on nearly identical grounds, objecting to demands for access to sensitive health data — including virus samples and epidemiological records — without any guaranteed access to the medical innovations that data might yield. In December, Kenya's High Court suspended the implementation of its own signed deal pending litigation over data safety, while a proposed $1 billion agreement with Zambia has drawn criticism over both its data-sharing terms and reported linkages to cooperation on critical minerals.

Despite the resistance, the initiative has gained considerable traction elsewhere. To date, 32 countries have signed agreements with Washington under the strategy, collectively totaling $20.6 billion — comprising $12.8 billion in US funding and $7.8 billion in contributions from partner nations, according to the State Department.

African signatories span the continent and include Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Ghana's refusal nonetheless underscores a deepening fault line between Washington's data-access demands and the sovereignty concerns of recipient nations — a tension that threatens to widen as the administration pushes its health agenda further across the developing world.

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