Accra, May 13, GNA – The Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College products can longer be tribesmen in the performance of their duties, Defence Minister, Lieutenant General Joseph Henry Smith (Rrd) said on Friday.

“Our defence should be national, our horizon should be regional and continental,” he said at the close of a two-week Defence and Management course organised for officers and civilian personnel working within the security sector.

The course aims at exposing participants with security and defence issues.

The workshop was also to enable civil servants and military officers to locate defence within the wider context of national and regional security and to bring civil servants and the military closer to appreciate each other’s role within the framework security and defence.

Lt. Gen Smith whose speech was read on his behalf by the Chief Director of the Defence Ministry, Mr Fosu Appiah, stressed that: “If we want to eradicate malaria, replace our lost forest and hold back the desert, it cannot be conceived in the tribesman mode.”

“It is a package of our collective wisdom, dynamic, organic and continually relevant to what we need in the region” he said.

He proposed that media men and journalist should be encouraged to participate in this programme in the future, adding “that radio alone is powerful if we use it well, it can serve as a mechanism to shift Ghana positively.

“It is certainly advisable to deepen our relationships with knowledge reservoirs such as the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, the University of Ghana, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, he said.

Lt. Gen Smith said Africa had huge development needs - access to shelter, water, health, education, and food security, adding that security threats developed faster than Africans could keep up with.

“Therefore increasing human understanding and tolerance is the simplest and most direct way of avoiding future conflicts,” he said.

He was optimistic that conflict level in Africa was reducing, adding that the military was figuring out how to prevent them and how to repair the damage after they had occurred.

“We will get to where we want to be and part of the optimism is the persistence of institutions like Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College,” he said.

Major Gen. Kwesi Yankson, Commandant of the College, said the course offered the opportunity for the military to interact with their external participants to share ideas and to learn from each other.

He thanked the British Government, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Defence Ministry, GIMPA and the High Military Command for their support.