File photo of an armoured vehicle
Ghana’s Parliament has approved $86 million for the purchase of armoured vehicles for the Ghana Armed Forces from an Israeli company.
About $80 million of the loan facility, also from an Israeli lender, will go to Elbit Systems Land Limited of Israel for the supply of the vehicles.
The rest will go to firms arranging the facility and other associated costs.
The loan facility was agreed between Ghana represented by the Finance Ministry and the Israel Discount Bank Limited for an amount of $74 million and a separate one for $12 million.
A case for new armoured vehicles
In 2017, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, said the Ghana Army needed to upgrade its armoured vehicles to efficiently offer protection and mobility in difficult and hostile terrains.
Speaking at the 2017 Armoured Vehicles and Future Fires Africa Conference and Defence Exhibition in Accra, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng said Ghana was currently ranked the seventh largest contributor of troops to the United Nations Peace Support operations.
The conference, hosted by the Ghana Armed Forces, in collaboration with the International Quality and Productivity Centre (IQPC), aimed to digest fires available to the military and examine the way forward for optimum application in contemporary warfare.
The event, on the theme; “Ensuring Survivability and Ground Superiority through Protected Mobility and Enhanced Firepower,” aimed to engender benchmarking, debate, and collaboration in the area of procurement of new platforms, maintenance and upgrade of existing vehicles and equipment.
It brought together security agencies from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroun, South Africa and Botswana among others.
