Claim: President John Mahama has closed down all US military bases in Ghana
Source: GhanaFact WhatsApp chatbot
Verdict: False
Researched by Gifty Danso
GhanaFact, through its WhatsApp chatbot, received a claim that President John Dramani Mahama has closed down all US military bases in Ghana.
The Facebook link shared to the chatbot was posted on March 5, 2025 by Shaykh Khalid Yasin, a popular American Islamic preacher with the caption “Listen Well.” Shaykh Yasin had shared a video from another Facebook user called Xolani Dlamini who was celebrating Ghana’s bold move to close US military bases.
The video bearing the military base closures featured a split screen with Mahama’s portrait at the top and a video reel of US military below. It had a caption that read: “Ghana new president shocks the world by closing U.S. military bases.” Dlamini shared the video on January 16, 2025, which was 10 days after Mahama was sworn into office. Below are the engagement statistics on the original post and Shaykh Yasin’s reshare.
| Facebook User | Reactions | Comments | Shares |
| Shaykh Khalid Yasin | 315 | 22 | 88 |
| Xolani Dlamini | 8.4K | 814 | 3.3K |
| NOTE: All data valid as at May 23, 2025 | |||
Using keyword search function, GhanaFact found that the video was shared by multiple social media users on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Medium ( here, here, here, here, and here).
The earliest the claim surfaced was on December 22, 2024, through a Medium post with the caption “Ghana Closes All US Military Bases. Joins Burkina Faso, Who Kicked France Out Months Ago.”
This fact-check will verify the authenticity of the claim.
Fact-check
GhanaFact’s investigation shows that Ghana currently does not host a permanent United States military base.
The issue became topical in 2018, under former president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, when Parliament approved a cabinet proposal for a Ghana-US defence cooperation agreement that allows US military personnel access to Ghana’s military facilities and agreed facilities and areas.
The agreement had initially sparked protests and fears that the US would establish a military base in the country.
However, the US Embassy in Ghana issued a statement explaining that the deal, which is known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), had been in place since 1998.
Ghana’s president at the time, Nana Akufo-Addo also dismissed the reports and branded the concerns about a US military base as falsehood.
“So let me state with the clearest affirmation that Ghana has not offered a military base, and will not offer a military base to the United States of America. Indeed, the United States of America has not made any request for such consideration and, consistent with our established foreign policy, we will not consider any such request.
“However, in consideration of the realities of our circumstances and the challenges to peace in our region in our time, we have deemed it prudent to continue the Co-operation Agreement with the United States of America,” Akufo-Addo said in a televised address on April 5, 2018 (find here).
Since President John Mahama’s government assumed power on January 7, 2025, no announcements have been made regarding the closure of military bases or the termination of US-Ghana military deals.
In a Daily Graphic publication on September 2, 2024, the Director of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) Coordination Element, Major General Kenneth P. Ekman, told the newspaper that the US has no intention of establishing a military base in Ghana (find here).
Also, a July 10, 2024, report from the US Congressional Research Service details territories where the country has established military bases. In Africa, only four territories have allowed US overseas bases in their countries. These are in countries like Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, and Chad.
Verdict
The claim is therefore rated false!
NOTE: This claim was submitted by a user of the GhanaFact chatbot.
