Ghana said Friday that it will not proceed with a U.S. health aid proposal that would have allowed American organizations to access sensitive medical data without prior domestic approval. Arnold Kavaarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, said the terms of the proposed agreement lacked necessary safeguards and compromised local oversight.
The agency was directly involved in negotiations over the $300 million agreement, which included about $109 million in U.S. funding to the Ghanaian government over five years. Kavaarpuo told The Associated Press that the scope of the data access requested under the deal “went far beyond what would typically be required.”
Under the proposed deal, up to 10 U.S. entities could have accessed national health records without first seeking Ghanaian approval for how the information would be utilized.
“That, in effect, was outsourcing the health data architecture of the country to a foreign body,” Kavaarpuo 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.”
Kavaarpuo added that the proposal lacked real governance oversight from Ghana once the data was shared.
Ghana received approximately $109 million in projected U.S. funding over a five-year period under the agreement, with supplemental investments coming from the Ghanaian government. Kavaarpuo said Ghana has communicated its rejection of the current proposal to Washington and will continue to seek improved conditions for a better deal.
The rejection reflects broader regional unease with the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to global health funding. The new bilateral model, which began rolling out late last year, replaces previous aid agreements that ran through the now-dismantled United States Agency for International Development. More than 30 countries have already struck such health deals, most of them in Africa.
Authorities in Zimbabwe similarly walked away from a proposed deal in February, citing issues around health data, fairness and sovereignty. Zambia has reportedly pushed back on similar sections of its agreement, though no final decision has been made on that front.
Activists and regional experts say the agreements often lack adequate protections for data use. In Nigeria, the U.S. committed to supporting mainly Christian faith-based healthcare providers. Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also cited “huge concerns” regarding data sharing in comments to reporters about the deals.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Friday that the department does not disclose details of bilateral negotiations. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, the spokesperson added that the U.S. continues to look for ways to strengthen the bilateral partnership between the two countries. Ghana’s Data Protection Commission did not immediately provide further details on the specific timeline for renegotiations.