Ghana has declined a proposed health partnership with the United States, raising concerns about insufficient protections for sensitive medical information, according to a Ghanaian official who spoke with The Associated Press on Friday. The decision makes Ghana another African nation to turn down such agreements due to similar data privacy issues.
According to Arnold Kavaarpuo, who leads Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, the extent of data access being sought “went far beyond what would typically be required for the purpose for which it’s stated.”
The State Department has not yet provided a response to AP’s request for comment regarding the Ghanaian official’s statements.
These health partnerships have been established with approximately two dozen African countries through the Trump administration’s “America First” strategy for international health funding. This new framework, which began implementation in late 2023, has replaced various previous health agreements that existed under the former United States Agency for International Development structure.
The partnerships provide hundreds of millions of dollars in American funding to nations severely affected by U.S. aid reductions, aimed at strengthening their public health infrastructure and combating disease outbreaks.
However, these agreements have sparked concerns about data privacy protections. Earlier this year in February, Zimbabwe officials announced their rejection of a similar proposal due to concerns about health data handling, fairness, and national sovereignty. Zambia has also reportedly expressed resistance to certain sections of their proposed agreement, though no final determination has been reached.
African advocacy groups argue that these agreements frequently lack sufficient protections for data usage and can be restrictive, pointing to Nigeria’s agreement where U.S. support was primarily directed toward Christian faith-based healthcare organizations.
Jean Kaseya, who serves as Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, has also expressed “huge concerns” about data and pathogen sharing requirements when discussing these agreements with media.
The proposed Ghana agreement, valued at approximately $300 million, would have provided the country with roughly $109 million in U.S. funding over a five-year period, with additional investments from Ghana’s government, according to Kavaarpuo.
Kavaarpuo, whose commission participated directly in the negotiations, highlighted a concerning provision that would allow individual identification when considered necessary for sensitive health information.
“That, in effect, was outsourcing the health data architecture of the country to a foreign body,” he said. “The proposed data sharing agreement looked at access not only to health data sets, but also to metadata, dashboards, reporting tools, data models and data dictionaries.”
The terms would have granted up to 10 U.S. organizations access to such information without requiring Ghana’s prior consent for data usage purposes, he explained.
“We did not get a sense that Ghana had any real governance oversight when it came to how the data was going to be utilized. It was more or less if they undertook an exercise, they will notify the country. So it was not a prior approval arrangement,” he said.
Kavaarpuo confirmed that Ghana has informed the United States of its decision to reject the current proposal and has requested better terms for a future agreement.
