Eight years of negotiations, nearly a dozen technical committee meetings alternating between Accra and Lomé, a Joint Maritime Boundary Technical Committee, sub-technical working groups, and two escalations to presidential level have produced nothing.
On Friday, February 20, 2026, Ghana formally ran out of patience and served Togo with notice that the dispute over their shared maritime boundary in the Gulf of Guinea will now be settled by international arbitration.
Minister for Government Communications Felix Kwakye Ofosu confirmed that Ghana will seek the delimitation of the offshore boundary under the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the global legal framework governing the use of the world’s oceans, following eight years of bilateral negotiations that failed to yield a mutually agreed settlement.
The origins of the dispute date to 2016, when Togo notified Ghana that it no longer recognised the customary maritime boundary that both countries had used without formal agreement or conflict for over six decades. By doing so, Togo created what is now called the “transboundary area,” the zone between the long-established customary line and the meridian boundary Togo began applying unilaterally. The area sits over the Keta Basin on Ghana’s eastern maritime flank, a region of growing strategic importance given the potential for offshore oil and gas deposits.
Negotiations that followed broke down repeatedly over differences in methodology, baseline coordinates, and the interpretation of nautical charts. Togo also lodged complaints about the presence of Ghanaian naval vessels in contested waters while talks were ongoing. In 2021, Ghana proposed a demarcation line that Togo rejected outright. By May 2022, with negotiations stalled after eleven formal sessions, the Ghanaian team escalated the unresolved issues to the Presidency. No agreement came from that escalation either.
The decision to refer the matter to arbitration under UNCLOS suggests Ghana is seeking a binding legal determination rather than continued political negotiation, and although the government’s statement did not reference specific exploration blocks or incidents at sea, the emphasis on avoiding escalation points to mounting practical and commercial pressures beneath the surface.
This is not Ghana’s first time navigating this legal road. In 2014, Ghana initiated arbitration against Côte d’Ivoire following disagreements over their offshore boundary in the Gulf of Guinea, particularly after significant oil discoveries in the area. The case was heard by a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and in September 2017 the tribunal delivered a binding judgment that largely upheld Ghana’s position and formally delimited the maritime boundary along an equidistance line. That precedent matters. Ghana’s legal team will be drawing directly on the experience of that successful case as it prepares its submissions in the Togo dispute.
The UNCLOS arbitration process is expected to take several years, during which both countries will present legal and technical arguments including hydrographic data, historical claims, and prior treaty records to an international tribunal. Legal experts note that arbitration provides a neutral and structured mechanism for resolving complex maritime disputes, particularly those involving exclusive economic zones, continental shelves, and offshore resources, and the move by Ghana is expected to reaffirm its commitment to peaceful conflict resolution and regional stability within the West African sub-region.
The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) rights at stake extend 200 nautical miles from the coastline and govern access to fisheries, seabed minerals and hydrocarbon exploration in waters that both countries have an economic interest in developing. For Ghana, a legally binding boundary does not just close a diplomatic chapter. It provides the certainty that investors in offshore energy and blue economy projects require before committing capital.
