Jaishankar says India and Ghana should take comprehensive ties to next level

India and Ghana are historical partners and have long stood together as champions of the Global South, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday, as he underlined the similarities in the challenges and development priorities of both countries. Speaking after talks with Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa during his visit to the West African nation, Jaishankar said programmes in Ghana such as Accra Reset, Feed Ghana and the goal of creating 1 million coders mirror Indian initiatives in health, food security and digital growth.

Jaishankar said India and Ghana, which have established a comprehensive partnership, now need to take ties to the next level. He said the two sides discussed expanding cooperation beyond the agreements exchanged on agricultural research and education and biodiversity, with a focus on pharmaceuticals and health, mining, defence, railways and digital sectors.

Jaishankar, who arrived in Ghana on Tuesday on the first leg of his three-nation tour of African countries, said it was a pleasure to be there on his first visit to Ghana and to follow up on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit last year. Modi visited Ghana in July 2025 in what was his first bilateral visit to the country and the first prime ministerial visit from India to Ghana in three decades.

"Now, when we look at Ghana from an Indian perspective, of course, for us, you have been historic partners. We have both been champions of the Global South before that term was even invented," Jaishankar said. He added, "And we have, I think, in the world, in difficult circumstances, stood up for the independence and the self-reliance and the dignity of countries who were earlier colonised." He said that as both countries have established a comprehensive partnership, "we need to live up to that".

Referring to his discussions with Ablakwa and President John Dramani Mahama, Jaishankar said many of the programmes being pursued in Ghana are similar to those in India because the developing world faces shared challenges in parallel areas. "So whether it is a programme like Accra Reset, which deals with health, we have something similar in Ayushman Bharat. You have Feed Ghana, which focuses on food security; we have programmes dedicated to farmers' prosperity and the promotion of millets," he said. "You have the goal of 1 million coders; we have our programmes on Digital India and Startup India." He said that given these similarities, it was natural for India and Ghana as countries of the Global South to pool their experience and see how they could support each other.

The two countries exchanged a Memorandum of Understanding between the Zoological Survey of India and the University of Ghana for cooperation in academics, scientific research and capacity building. Another MoU was exchanged between the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, and CSIR-Crops Research Institute, Ghana, for cooperation in Agricultural Research and Education, in the presence of the two ministers.

Jaishankar also said he was pleased to see the Indian business community thriving in Ghana. "We have a longstanding, very vibrant Indian community. And the business part of that community, I think, has really been a living bridge between us," he said. "So we really do believe today that our partnership would help in strengthening resilience, in promoting inclusion, in ensuring that growth really delivers for our people in what is otherwise a very turbulent and complicated world," he added.

On the regional and multilateral front, Jaishankar said India values Ghana's historical role in the African Union context, where it will assume the chairship next year, and in ECOWAS. He said India has deep and longstanding partnerships with both organisations and that Ghana's role is widely appreciated in India. Ghana is a founding member of ECOWAS, a 15-member regional bloc dedicated to economic, social and political integration across West Africa. He also said both India and Ghana, as Commonwealth members, are equally committed to several issues. "We certainly applaud Ghana's commitment to reparatory justice and to the restitution of cultural properties, and the very important resolution moved in the UN General Assembly by Ghana, with a follow-up meeting that took place here, in which we also participated," he said.

Jaishankar said Ghana has been a strong voice at the UN for meeting the sustainable development goals, which have fallen behind this decade because of multiple conflicts, COVID and other challenges. He also noted Ghana's participation in international initiatives led by India, including the Solar Alliance, of which Ghana is a founding member, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. Summing up the broader message of the visit, Jaishankar said India and Ghana see each other as longstanding partners whose shared priorities, growing cooperation and common global outlook can help deepen ties further. "I think the world is moving towards multipolarity, towards its natural diversity. And it's incumbent on countries like us, who have been through difficult experiences in our history, to stand up as voices of independence," he said.

With PTI Inputs

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