Australian embassy joins terrorism alert fray but pledges $75,000 to strengthen Ghana’s security base

The Australian government has pledged its  support to Ghana with 75,000 Australian dollars to help build the capacity of local security personnel at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre.

The aim is to boost the country’s ability to fight terrorism, particularly in the wake of terror threats against Ghana.

The First Assistant Secretary, Foreign Affairs and Trade, at the High Commission, Ms H. K. Yu, revealed this at the ongoing West Africa Mining Security Conference in Accra on Tuesday, 11 June 2019.

Ms Yu and the Australian High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Andrew Barnes, also spoke about the travel advice issued on Tuesday to their citizens living in or travelling to Ghana.

Mr Barnes said: “We’ve just, this morning, updated our travel advice here in Ghana but we haven’t raised the level. We put a bit more emphasis on advising Australians travelling and living in Ghana to be more aware of their personal security and we’ve mentioned that they should be careful of using public transport and taxis and Ubers and that sort of thing. Just a reminder for everyone to just exercise due caution and take general safety decisions.”

Ms Yu added: “If I may add, one of the key functions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade carry out is to provide updated travel advice to all Australians overseas. So, this is part of normal business where we actually monitor the situation in every country very closely in close cooperation with the police and when new bits of information become available to us because of events happening in other countries, then we promptly update the content of travel advice to draw the attention of Australians going overseas to the information.”

Australia becomes the third country after Canada and the UK to issue such an alert to her citizens in the wake of heightened terrorism fears and the rising spate of kidnapping in Ghana.