Maritime business to rise on West coast as Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire settle dispute
Experts in West Coast maritime business have saluted the governments of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire for a peaceful settlement of their lingering maritime boundary dispute in the last few years.
It would be recalled that a committee set up by Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire had relied on the provisions defined by the ruling of the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) last year to reach an amicable resolution.
A protracted maritime dispute between Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire was settled on September 23, 2017 when the ITLOS ruled that Ghana had not violated the sovereign rights nor trespassed into the marine boundary of Cote d’Ivoire with its oil exploration in the Western Region of Ghana.
Business Hilights Ghana Bureau chief gathered that the Technical Committee made up of experts from both nations that resolved the crisis used the coordinate submitted by Cote d’Ivoire during the second joint committee meeting to successfully plot the seven coordinates and had determined the maritime boundary as outlined by ITLOS.
A Ghanaian maritime expert, Dr. Ayew Duncan in an interview said “With the resolution of the differences, business activities between both nations and other West African maritime nations will be on the rise.
“I think all of us doing our business in the sea had long expected this resolution. Now it has come, businesses will speed off and we are good to go.
Dr Duncan thanked the committee for doing a good job and called on stakeholders to embrace maritime peace so as to deepen growth with both local and foreign investors so as to reassure growth in Ghana’s blue economy target.
Truce was finally reached when Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo leader of Ghana’s delegation and Mr. Adama Toungara, leader of the Cote d’Ivoire team signed a communiqué on behalf of their respective countries signaling the end of the maritime imbroglio.
Osafo-Maafo, while explaining issues during two-day meeting in Accra, recalled that Ghana reviewed the chart with the plotted coordinates of the maritime boundary as provided by ITLOS submitted by Cote d’lvoire at the May 2018 meeting in Abidjan and found it to be acceptable in principle.
According to him, “The parties jointly plotted the seven coordinates and azimuth in accordance with the ITLOS decision and had agreed to execute a document evidencing the plotted maritime boundary at the next meeting scheduled for October 2018 in Cote d’lvoire”.
Besides, he revealed that riding on the progress made from the sealed deal, “The two countries had agreed to discuss the draft Framework Agreement on cooperation in the areas of maritime boundary, hydrocarbons and other natural resources between the two countries at the next meeting”.
The success of the deal stemmed from an earlier meeting held in May 2018 at Abidjan, where, Côte d’Ivoire shared with Ghana a document on the plotting of the coordinates in accordance with the ITLOS decision of the maritime boundary between the two countries on a nautical chart at a scale of 1:1 million.
