Is it safe in Ghana?
trick, which is used on open windows to snatch phones or wallets in close proximity.
This happened to a friend, they got his keys, broke in and took his laptop.
A few months ago, someone reached through a neighbour’s window and got his car keys. We woke up to his car stereo blaring at 4am, the lights on and doors open. Turns out there was no gas.
If you can afford it, it’s increasingly common to have your own security guard here. My office always has at least one guard on duty, and my apartment block has a night guard after that attempted car theft.
Overall, there is a fairly large security presence here in Accra, with those private guards everywhere, and police at highprofile public places, like outside the mall and near bus stations. They often set up barriers on the roads checking cars.
But despite the occasional harrowing headline and constant reminders from people telling me to be careful everywhere I go, generally I do feel safe here.
I live right by my office and know my neighbours. There’s a feeling you’re being looked out for. And we really barricade ourselves into our little prison apartment. So, ‘‘how safe is it?’’ for me, as safe as I can be, I guess.
But, aside from those opportunistic robberies that continue to worry people here, the constant threat from outside forces also gets people talking.
Since a spate of terror attacks in West Africa over the past nine months, security at the bigger hotels and international airport has been beefed up, as has the chatter on radio shows of people lamenting about terror threats.
In Mali, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire, Al-Qaeda has attacked popular hotels or resorts, with high death tolls, including foreigners.
In the past, these kind of attacks while terrible, didn’t really register too much to me, but now the threat is close.
Those countries are our neighbours.
Looking for expert opinion, maybe some reassurance, I spoke to a leading security expert here, the director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Centre, Dr Emmanuel Kwesi Aning.
He tells me Ghana is doing what it can to prevent a terror attack, with the police and military coordinating, but being an open society where people can travel freely, ‘‘we are at risk just like any other country is at risk’’.
He tells me what no one wants to hear: ‘‘It’s going to get worse.
‘‘These three attacks were carried out by Al-Qaeda I think as Islamic State is driven out of Syria and Iraq and they come to Libya they will begin to come down south and will be looking for more spectacular attacks.’’
He’s frank and honest, doesn’t mince his words and is well regarded here with his assessments, so with this all in mind, I pose him the question, that I always get: ‘Really, how safe is Ghana?’
Despite it all, Dr Aning tells me ‘‘we are very safe.
‘‘I think we are among the safest five per cent of African countries. I think we are very safe for people coming from overseas as tourists, wanting to do business or to study ... of course we cannot deny that there maybe something opportunistic or something happening out of the blue.’’
With the world being rocked these past few weeks by more gun killings in the US, scores dead in Turkey’s failed coup and those 84 killed in Nice, it doesn’t seem to matter where you are, as a colleague here says ‘‘there’s threats everywhere, just different kinds.’’
All you can do is lock your doors, watch your back and try to stand strong in the face of terror.