Your Excellencies and my distinguished colleagues, friends and partners in global transformation, let me begin by thanking the World Economic Forum for creating space for this session, and to our various strategic partners, not least the African Development Bank, the Global Fund, Afro Champions, Georgetown University and the Rockefeller Foundation for stepping forward at a moment when the world’s health and development systems are being tested by disruption, conflict and a new atmosphere of intellectual retreat.
Of course my appreciation goes to the Guardian Circle of the Accra Reset, of which President Obasanjo is one, and is led by him, the Alliance for African Multilateral Financial Institutions and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
This afternoon I stand before you as an African leader, born in the heady days of post-independence Africa. Growing up I could feel the excitement of my parents and their generation about the possibilities of our newly won freedom and the rights to manage our own affairs. My country Ghana will celebrate its 70th anniversary of independence from colonial rule in March next year.
In the relatively short span of seven decades, we’ve been through a lot. We’ve seen coup d’etats and periods of democratic governance. We’ve lived through the Cold War, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
We’re excited about the advent of globalization and we came together as a global family to work on the MDGs, the SDGs and climate change. Today as I address you here in Davos, one thing is clear. Our world as we know it is at an inflection point.
The global multilateral governance system universally agreed and accepted after the Second World War is breaking down. Bilateral relations among nations are increasingly becoming transactional and many state and non-state actors are acting unilaterally in pursuing their own national and parochial interests. Africa has lagged behind in the past decades following liberation from colonial rule and has been trapped in cycles of conflict and multidimensional poverty.
Africa has strived on handouts and humanitarian assistance from the developed world. While no specific name has yet been coined for the new global system that will emerge, Africa intends to be at the table in determining what that new global order will look like. Africa must pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
Global humanitarian assistance is shrinking and many developed countries including Europe are compelled to cut Overseas Development Assistance and increase defense spending by the new reality of an unpredictable ally across the Atlantic. The COVID experience was a wake-up call. Africa was the last continent to begin receiving vaccines amid a global pandemic.
But for the immunological profile and resilience of our African population, many millions would have died in that pandemic. And that is why I am grateful, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, that you made time to be a part of this afternoon’s Davos convening of the Accra Reset Initiative on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. Just last September at the UN General Assembly, I introduced the Accra Reset Initiative not as another declaration, not as a wish list, but as a practical answer to a question millions of young Africans are asking.
What should Africa’s response be in a changing global order? Today in Ghana we are answering that question. We are resetting our country. We are cutting waste.
We are restoring hope. And we are building systems that work. In my first year of being back in office, we have shown that democracy works and that change is possible when leadership is focused and accountable to the people.
From a debt-distressed, crisis-ridden economy, we have achieved an impressive turnaround with a stable macro-economy characterized by single-digit inflation, a strengthened currency, and increased business confidence. But here is what keeps me up at night. Ghana’s success alone is not enough.
I have an admirable Ghana’s turnaround story. It is that we cannot be a jewel in the debt. We must work together as Africa.
We must knit together the patchwork of success stories. And that is why we are here in Davos today. To take what is working across many countries in Africa and the global south and scale it up across other countries.
To move from resetting one country to resetting the entire development model for the global south. And let me be direct about what we are up against. Too many of our countries are caught in what I call the triple dependency.
We depend on others for our security choices. We depend on donors for our health and educational systems. We supply the world’s critical minerals but capture almost none of its value.
This isn’t sovereignty. It’s a trap. And it’s getting worse.
In my quiet moments, as I try to find solutions, here’s what I’ve learned. Crisis creates clarity. The clarity is this.
That we must build our own capacity to act. There’s precedent for what I’m proposing. Twenty years ago, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and several courageous world leaders, including President Obasanjo here, made a simple powerful case.
HIV-AIDS was ravaging millions in Africa and a global response was required. This courage created the architecture of the Global Fund, which saved millions of lives in Africa and across the world. That fight succeeded because leaders decided to act together, with urgency and without excuse.
Today, I’m not so sure. The U.S. has gotten funding to the United Nations system and other global organizations that have saved millions of lives. And we face an unpredictable world.
And this is why Africa must be responsible for its destiny. Today, we face a different pandemic, a pandemic of unfulfilled potential. Millions of young people have no jobs.
Health systems are collapsed at the first crisis. Economies that extract our resources but build nothing long-lasting. If we could mobilize the world to fight the disease, why can’t we mobilize to fight poverty, to fight dependency, to fight the systems that keep brilliant young Africans locked out of the future? In Ghana, we’re proving something important, that execution beats excuses.
We’re cutting government spending and are reducing the size of government to a record low of 58 ministers, including deputy ministers and regional ministers. We’re digitizing services to end corruption. We’re training young people for the jobs of tomorrow.
We have renegotiated our debts so we can invest in our people, and not just service loans. This is a reset in Ghana agenda, and it’s working because we stopped talking about the transformation and we started building that transformation. I imagine the same approach across Africa and the entire global South.
The multilateral order and rules-based system may be under threat, but we can forge a new coalition of the willing, based on a shared vision and mutual respect for each other. What if we pooled our negotiating power on critical minerals so we capture value and not just extract raw ore? What if we exercised more sovereignty over our natural resources to create prosperity for our own people? What if we built regional manufacturing hubs that create millions of jobs for our young people? What if we produced our own vaccines and our own medicines with our own technology? This is the Accra Reset vision. It’s not a talk show.
It’s not an inspiration. It’s a practical blueprint for how countries can work together to build real sovereignty, the kind that you can measure in jobs created, in children at school, children vaccinated, and young people thriving. My fellow leaders, let me speak plainly.
In this fast-changing world, we’re entering an era where countries must compete, innovate, and build or be left behind. Our young people are watching. They’re brilliant.
They’re hungry. And they’re running out of patience. So here’s what we must focus on.
First, we must invest in skills, not just education, but skills that match real jobs in the real economy. Digital skills, green energy skills, manufacturing skills. We need a generation of young Africans who can build and not just consume.
Second, we must build together. No African country can industrialize alone by itself. We must create regional prosperity platforms, manufacturing zones, energy grids, and digital infrastructure that gives our businesses skill and our workers opportunity.
Third, we must negotiate as one. When we bargain separately, we’re weak. When we negotiate together on minerals, trade, and climate finance, we can be formidable.
Unity should not be just a slogan. It must be our strategy. Fourth, we must produce at home, from vaccines to semiconductors to solar panels.
If we don’t make it, we’ll always be dependent on someone who does. Industrial policy isn’t old-fashioned. It is what will make us survive.
And fifth, and most importantly, we must hold ourselves accountable to our people. We cannot ask the world to invest in us if we tolerate corruption, waste, and systems that don’t work. Reset means reform, and reform means results.
And so that was commitment. Friends, we didn’t come here to ask for charity. We came to propose a global partnership of the willing, based on a shared vision and mutual respect for each other.
The Accra Reset is building the architecture for a new kind of cooperation, one where global south countries don’t just receive programs but co-design them with our partners in the global north, where we don’t just attract investment but shape it around what are our priorities. We want to create prosperity fears across regional platforms where countries coordinate on investments, infrastructure, and jobs. President Obasanjo often reminds me that leadership is about legacy, and he asks me, what will you leave behind? My answer is simple.
We want to leave a continent where young people don’t risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean because they will have opportunities at home. We want to leave systems that work, industries that thrive, and nations that stand tall. And in this, Ghana cannot do it alone.
Africa can’t do it alone. There is a call to every leader in this room. If you believe in a world where prosperity is shared, not just based on narrow interests, then join us.
If you believe that global south deserves partnership and not pity, join us. If you believe the next chapter of human progress is going to be written in Accra, Nairobi, Kigali, Abuja, and Cairo, then join us. The Accra research is not seeking permission but building momentum.
From New York last September to this room in Davos and to the African Union in Addis Ababa next month and soon at the Oslo Dialogues, we shall continue to build these partnerships. And so the question is not whether the world needs this. The question is whether we have the courage to build it.
I thank you.
Related Posts
