 The US footprint in Africa continues to grow. A key anchor of this presence is its arrangement in Ghana which was the result of an agreement signed in 2018. Kaniyan authorities then said that they were not giving a base to the United States. However, is this really true or is it a mere technicality? The US has set up the West Africa Logistics Network at Kotoka International Airport in Akra. How does this network function and what privileges does it give to the US? Vijay Prashad, who recently wrote an article on the US presence in Ghana, describes this agreement. Well, it's important to recognize that Ghana has an interesting history. It's the first major country on the African continent south of the Sahara to win its independence from colonialism. In 1957, Kwame Nkrumah led the people of Ghana into sovereignty and so on. So there is a residue of the great feeling of Ghanaian sovereignty in the air. I think that's important to keep in mind. So in 2018, Prashant, in 2018, when the government of Ghana decided to strike a deal with the United States to give the US military permission to use one of the three terminals at the Akra airport, when this was being debated, there was a lot of anger and resentment on the streets of Ghana because people felt this is going to compromise the sovereignty when that agreement leaked and eventually was published. It didn't allay any of those fears principally because it gives the United States military extraterritorial control in Ghana, meaning simple thing, US soldiers walk off a plane and can walk on to Ghanaian soil. They don't even have to carry a passport. They don't have to carry any kind of visa. They have more privileges. In fact, the US military personnel in Ghana have more privileges than ambassadors, than diplomats whose right to being in another country is governed by the Vienna protocol. And here we have the case of US soldiers with one of three terminals in the most important airport in Ghana doing anything. The terminal can't be searched by Ghanaian authorities and so on. So the sovereignty of Ghana super, super in doubt when it comes to this agreement with the US government. The US government keeps saying, look, there's no base there. And so does the Ghanaian government. There's no base, there's no base. But they are fighting on a technicality. What's a base? The military has basically taken over part of the Ghana civilian airport. They've converted that into a base. There's no question that this is not some sort of military facility or a warehouse. That's just them being sophistic in a sense, playing with words. In fact, a base is a base and this is a military base. A key question has been regarding the strategic goal of the US in establishing this base in Ghana. What does the US seek to achieve with such an arrangement? And what are its aims not only in Ghana but also in West Africa? To understand why the United States wants this base and wanted it so desperately, I spoke to Quacy Pratt Jr, who's the leader of the socialist movement of Ghana, a very respected journalist. In fact, he had created a bit of a fricca in 2018 in a radio debate with the Defense Minister of Ghana when he questioned this agreement. So I asked Quacy Pratt four years later, why does the US want this base and so on? Well, one of the reasons is it's using this base as a logistical hub to principally provide logistical support to US bases along the Sahel region in Africa, going from Akra all the way out to Djibouti. There's this weekly flight that used to run from the US base in Germany to Akra, bringing in supplies and personnel and then it was sort of parachuted into other parts of the Sahel region of Africa from Akra. So one reason is that as a support base for increasing US military presence on the African continent, but even that doesn't explain the question of why. Well, Quacy Pratt Jr says, look, Ghana is one of the principal sites for the production of gold, other rare earth minerals and so on. And it is another indication of the way in which the principal way in which the United States is contesting the growing presence of Chinese commercial interests on the African continent. It's very clear that you don't have to have a military base. The Chinese don't have a base in Ghana, but the Chinese commercial interests have been increasing on the African continent. Many of the countries, their principal trading partner is no longer European or the United States, or in some cases even South Africa, but China. That's very significant. Zambia's, as an example, Zambia's principal trading partner is South Africa. Number two is China. India actually comes in the list ahead of the United States. The United States eager to use its military force to tighten its links to countries on the African continent to somehow use military force or the presence of the military to encourage governments to sign deals with US companies rather than Chinese companies. This is a story that we've seen for the last 70 years, if not longer. It's a kind of gunboat commerce that we're seeing on the African continent now. The United States and France have been working very closely in the region for years. The French have suffered blows recently with Mali ejecting their forces from the country and protests breaking out against French military presence across the Sahil region. How have the US and France been coordinating their actions and what is their goal? Well, after the United States and France through the instrument of NATO, the North American Treaty Organization, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, when these two countries basically pushed NATO in 2011 to destroy the state in Libya, create a lot of chaos, since then both France and the United States have collaborated very closely in Mali, in Niger, in Mauritania, other countries developing a military presence. This is backfired for many of these countries. In Mali, for instance, there's been two military coups and just last month, the Malian government booted out the French military presence from Mali and left one of the French government's most essential political projects in Africa, which is the G5 Sahel. Mali decided we're not going to have it anymore. Yes, ruled by military government, but also pressured by popular sentiment. I think that increasingly you're going to see the United States put its hand up in this region. The United States has the largest drone base in the region, in Niger, in the town of Agadez. It had been quite silent about its presence and I think as the French are being booted out, the US might feel the need to be more active. We also saw, and this is important, the French use the Rwandan military to do its dirty work, the dirty work of the French and the United States in Mozambique. It's likely that the United States and France, they will increase their military presence, but they're going to actually create closer ties to certain military forces, including Rwanda, and use them as a kind of proxy to do a lot of their dirty work on the continent so they can say, look, it's not us. It's an African country that's involved. Everybody knows that Rwanda's intervention into Mozambique had nothing to do with Rwanda's national interests. So even the interests of the African continent, that was done on behalf of the French energy giant Total and the US energy giant Exxon Mobil. I mean, that's why Rwanda intervened into the Cabo Delgado province and we're going to see a lot more of that as well. But yes, the United States is going to certainly increase its footprint, not only in Ghana, but also in Zambia.