If, at the conclusion of the recent blitz of regional and international gatherings held recently in Guyana that embraced the Republic itself alongside CARICOM hemispheric Heads of Government, high-profile diplomats from across the world and high profile businessmen keen to secure a ‘look-in’ in Guyana’s investment prospects, one such visitor who can lay claim to having had to carry the weightiest official ‘burden’ would be the Ghanaian Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey.
The Ghanaian politician arrived in Guyana, her visit having been preceded by visits here in June 2019 by her country’s President, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who returned in February 2022 for the country’s Energy Conference and EXPO. These presidential visits apart, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had journeyed to Accra on a three-day working visit and the Barbados-based Caribbean Export had in June last year led a trade mission to Guyana designed to foster collaboration and explore trade opportunities between Ghana and the Caribbean.
Quite apart from Accra’s interest in the nascent Guyana oil and gas industry, there were other ‘areas of mutual interest’ that required ‘fleshing out.’ Contextually, Accra would hardly have been unhappy over the timing of its Foreign Minister’s visit here since, while the local ‘oil and gas’ forum would have been its primary interest, the fact that it would coincide with visits here by officials from across the world with investment and petro interests, it would also have allowed for engagements with high officials, including, possibly, heads from elsewhere in the region visiting on various other international assignments.
If the recent visit here by the Ghanaian Foreign Minister would have served to keep intact the seamless threat of interest between Georgetown and Accra in matters pertaining to oil and gas, the visit would also have helped to keep in focus the wider mutual interest in each other’s countries shared by the two capitals. Back in June last year, the Caribbean Export had conveyed to the Stabroek Business its intense but pleasing visit to Ghana where it had not only been instrumental in the creation of the Ghana/Guyana Chamber of Commerce but had also secured engagements with functionaries in Ghana’s oil and gas industry.
To its particular credit these engagements between Guyana and Ghana served to continually enhance the mutual interests of the two countries in areas of business that went beyond the oil and gas sector. It was therefore almost certain that the Ghanaian Foreign Minister’s visit here would have been a multi-dimensional one. That Ghana’s interest in the region extends beyond its oil-and-gas ‘linkages’ with Guyana was exemplified in the fact that the media information on her visit here had announced that its Foreign Minister was traveling to the region as “a special guest” at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit in Georgetown, a pronouncement that would have extended the breadth of her mission well beyond bilaterals with Guyana Government officials on matters related to the two countries’ largely oil driven relations.
Caribbean Foreign Ministers, one feels, rarely, if ever, are set so many high-level assignments during the course of such brief ‘outings.’ Some of the official reportage on the Ghanaian Foreign Minister’s itinerary alluded to “closed-door meetings” with the Prime Ministers of St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica. As if that were not enough, Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Minister Dr. Amery Brown was directed to ‘sit in’ for Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley for T&T’s bilateral engagement with the Ghanaian Foreign Minister.
For good measure, Foreign Minister Botchwey’s ‘brief’ also included an address to the CARICOM Council of Ministers as well as attending a high profile reception where she was required to interface with President Irfaan Ali of Guyana, Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, Prime Minister Philip Davis of Bahamas, among various other senior officials from across the region. What the exacting itinerary handed the Ghanaian Foreign Minister during her assignment here was hardly accidental. It was deliberate, its strategic weightiness, one feels, intending to send an unmistakable signal to Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean, that the West African petro power was serious of reviving and significantly upgrading the historic ties between Africa and the Caribbean.
