Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me congratulate you Mr. president on you election to preside over the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. You assumed this solemn stewardship at a time of intense geopolitical fragmentation, deepening inequality and eroded trust in our multilateral system. Ghana is confident that your proven commitment to inclusive, consultative and principled dialogue will guide this Assembly well, and you have our full support.
I also wish to commend outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres for his dedicated service to our world body over the last ten years.
Mr. President, Ghana’s national anthem contains a profound petition. It asks God to make us bold to defend forever the cause of freedom and of rights, and those words give my compatriots and I courage to uphold the Pan-African and anti-colonial heritage that was equipped to us by our forebears.
Another line in our item petitions God to fill our hearts with true humility and make us cherish fearless honesty. That prayer inspires me today to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Lassie, Nelson Mandela and other global icons who have stood at this very podium before me and have spoken boldly and fearlessly about the state of affairs in our world.
The world may not transform overnight because of the speeches that we deliver here in this August Assembly, but history would faithfully record the truths we choose to speak and the silences that we choose to keep when we are granted the privilege of addressing this global town hall.
Allow me therefore to begin by reintroducing myself to the General Assembly. I stand before you as President of the Republic of Ghana, yet we too often ascend these heights draped only in the robes of our titles, forgetting that alongside each of us stands a history, a people and a legacy. I was born in a little town, Damongo, which was then a modest community in northern Ghana and is now the capital of the Savannah region of my country.
I was born to Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama of Bole and Madame Abiba Nnaba of Bunsunu, both of blessed memory. I belong to them and I belong to the foremothers and the forefathers who gave birth to them, who named them, who nurtured them and who passed down the enduring values by which I live today. I grew up at the crossroads of several Ghanaian cultures.
I speak Gonja, which is a Guan language. I speak Twi and Ga. I am fluent in Hausa, spoken across the West African Savannah and the Sahel.
I understand some Ewe and I speak English as my official language. In a very real sense, I belong to all these people because their tongues, including English, have become my tongue. Language creates a kingship, regardless of the historical complexities through which kingship was forged.
Mr. President, everybody in this chamber today and every global citizen listening to my words possesses an origin. We carry inherited memories, values, rich cultures and distinct identities of our homelands. Belonging anchors us and it reminds us that we are part of a human story that is far larger than ourselves.
It is a vital wellspring of dignity and pride, but belonging also has its dark side. When belonging is weaponized by political expediency, it transforms into nativism, chauvinism, xenophobia and the dangerous prejudices that are extended to people who are deemed different from us. It becomes the pretext for discrimination, for displacement, for persecution and war.
And yet for this organization, the United Nations, the founding principles remain immutable. Every human being belongs to the human family. No race is superior.
No nation is inferior. No child’s life is worthless because of the language they speak or the faith they profess or the color of their skin or the land of their birth. This is the unyielding moral foundation upon which the United Nations must stand.
I will return to this issue of belonging at the end of my speech. But Mr. President, last year from this very podium I made a solemn pledge on behalf of Africa and the global African diaspora to seek full international recognition of the transatlantic trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.
Some cautioned that we were reopening old wounds, but we came not to provoke division or render empty judgment. We came to seek healing. And true healing requires truth. And truth requires acknowledgment. Mr. President, for centuries this tragedy was rendered in the passive voice as though the millions of African men, women and children just vanished into the shadows of time.
Mr. President, they did not vanish. They were hunted. They were captured. They were trafficked. They were bought. They were sold.
They were exploited in exchange for profit. They were ripped from their families and communities they belong to. Their unpaid labor built the cities, industries, banking institutions and empires of the modern Western world.
Meanwhile the African continent was left depopulated, split families, structural disruption and generational trauma. Mr. President, on 25th March this year, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Ghana had the honor of tabling Resolution 80/250 in this very August Assembly.
Mr. President, 123 nations voted to affirm this fundamental truth that the Transatlantic Slave Trade and chattel enslavement were the gravest crimes against humanity.
I stand with respect at this podium to thank every nation that voted for justice and I’m deeply grateful to our brothers and sisters in the African Union, the CARICOM, CELAC and our partners across the global South.
That resolution was not a mere gesture. It was adopted because the structural legacies of those historic crimes continue to fuel systematic racism, economic marginalization and a global financial architecture that is weighted against Africa and people of African descent.
Since the passage of the historic resolution, we welcome the positive overtures from many countries and institutions that have joined the dialogue on reparative justice. The world made positive moves to join the conversation on reparative justice. Mr. President, real repair demands structural transformation.
It requires dismantling the persistent engines of exploitation, unfair global trade, predatory resource extraction, discriminatory credit ratings and sustainable debt burdens of the global South and the continued export of raw materials from Africa while real value addition and job creation occur elsewhere.
Mr. President, the injustices of the past remain embedded in today’s power structures. Africa is home to 1.5 billion people, over 18% of humanity and constitutes the largest regional voting bloc in this General Assembly.
And yet, Africa remains without a single permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. This is fundamentally unacceptable in the 21st century. Africa must be granted permanent representation on the UN Security Council, complete with all the rights and responsibilities.
We cannot credibly champion the sovereign equality of nations while preserving a global governance structure that was designed for the post-war geopolitical realities. Mr. President, Security Council reform is not a favour to Africa. It is an imperative for the legitimacy, the credibility and the survival of the United Nations.
The same systemic inequalities permeate the international financial architecture. Developing nations and the global South borrow at interest rates that are up to eight times higher than industrialized nations. African and Caribbean nations struck by climate disasters are forced to take on crippling debts to rebuild from floods and droughts that they did not cause.
Governments are forced into a tragic choice to service predatory debts or to serve their people. We demand reform. We need long-term affordable and accessible concessionary financing that enables developing economies to invest in human capital, in industrialization and climate adaptation.
Mr. President, Africa does not seek charity. Africa seeks equal partnership. That is anchored in mutual respect.
Our continent possesses the world’s youngest population, vast arable lands and parallel cultural vitality and the critical minerals required to drive the global green energy transition. But Mr. Speaker, let me warn, Africa will not remain a passive arena for a new scramble for resources. Critical mineral extraction in Africa must not replicate the colonial era expectation.
We will process our minerals at home. We will build local industries that create dignified jobs for our youth and will retain the value of our natural resources in Africa. The African Continental Free Trade Area, whose Secretariat, Ghana is proud to host, is our engine for intra-African trade, structural transformation and industrial growth.
As we heal historical wounds, we must address the alarming breakdown of the current global order. We are witnessing a dangerous shift towards unilateralism, lawlessness and the erosion of multilateral norms. The United Nations must learn from the lessons of the League of Nations.
The UN Charter must reign supreme over the cynical doctrine that might makes right. The veto power must never serve as a license for impunity. Sovereign equality cannot be a privilege that is reserved only for nations that are aligned with global superpowers.
And nowhere is this crisis of credibility more painful than in the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, sorry I was on MP before. Mr. President, the time has come for us to stop using diplomatic euphemisms to veil the human carnage that is taking place in Gaza.
How many more lives must be lost before the world acts with decisive moral authority? The blood of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and the more than 20,000 children that have been killed in this brutal conflict cries out to the conscience of the world.
Collective punishments, enforced starvation and mass displacement are flagrant violations of international law. Ghana remains unwavering in its recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine and its steadfast support for a viable two-state solution where Israel and Palestine will live side by side in peace, security with guaranteed borders.
At the same time, we condemn all acts of terrorism by Hamas that triggered this conflict. And we insist that all parties unconditionally respect international humanitarian law. Our moral standards cannot be selective.
In that spirit of international legality and human solidarity, Ghana reiterates its call for the immediate lifting of the decades-long economic, commercial and financial embargo that has been imposed on Cuba. The world must support Cuba’s new economic and social program. Measures that inflict collective economic hardship on ordinary citizens run counter to our shared commitment to human dignity and international law.
We must likewise elevate our global response to the catastrophic conflict in Sudan, which is reported to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. We must also exercise solidarity with nations that are facing the terrorist scourge, especially our neighbors in the Alliance of Sahel states. The current Middle East crisis is having a deleterious effect on the world economy.
We call for a return to the negotiating table. And let me add that no human civilization deserves to be annihilated and certainly not a member of the United Nations. I believe that dialogue can resolve even the most intractable of global problems.
Across every conflict, whether in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the standard must remain uniform. Respect for sovereign integrity, protect civilians, ensure unhindered humanitarian access and hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable. Mr. President, those who have declared climate change a hoax perpetrated by geopolitical opponents, the warnings of recent times cannot have been clearer.
Melting glaciers, flash flooding, droughts, record-breaking heat waves, brush fires, hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena are unmistakable signs of an overburdened planet. Climate change is the ultimate test of global equity.
We in Africa contribute less than 4% of global greenhouse gases.And yet we bear some of the heaviest burden of climate devastation. We face erratic rainfall, our coastal towns suffer relentless erosion, and our Sahelian region faces accelerating desertification. On 29 June this year, Ghana and coastal West Africa faced an unprecedented deluge.
Torrential rain exceeding 160 mm was dumped on seven coastal regions of Ghana within 24 hours, resulting in 39 deaths and one still unaccounted for. And so climate justice demands that developed nations must fulfill their long-overdue financial commitments. Mitigation support must be operationalized with predictable non-debt-creating grants, not loans that feather in debt-fragile economies.
Similarly, global health security demands true solidarity, because pathogens do not respect national borders, they just walk across without visas. We must build an equitable global health architecture that guarantees regional manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutics, strengthen epidemic surveillance, and funds resilient public health infrastructure across the global South in accordance with the demands of the Accra Reset.
Mr. President, Excellencies, I agree that even as we demand a place at the table and call for a more equitable and just global order, as African leaders, we must also do what is required to put our own houses in order.
As the legal maxim goes, “Whoever comes into equity must come with clean hands”. African leadership must be transparent and accountable. We must commit to the fight against corruption and ensure that every dollar of our people’s money counts and is used efficiently in their interest.
Ghana is arguably the most stable democracy in Africa. We believe in the rule of law and have respect for human rights. And we are determined to demonstrate that democracy works.
While progress in a democracy may be slow because it must follow constitutional processes, it is more sustainable because it is built through popular participation and consensus building. As Ghana addresses these global imperatives, we are leading by example at home through our transformative Resetting Ghana agenda.
Less than two years into my administration, through disciplined governance and fiscal prudence and an uncompromising fight against corruption, Ghana has achieved a dramatic economic turnaround.
Indeed, some circles describe it as a “Ghanaian miracle”. Our macroeconomic stabilization measures have restored growth, drastically reduced inflation, stabilized our national currency, and significantly lowered our public debt burden.
This remarkable economic recovery story has been independently validated by all the multilateral financial institutions and major international credit rating agencies, all of which affirm that Ghana has moved from economic vulnerability to sustained recovery, resilience, and growth.
But Mr. President, macroeconomic indicators mean little if they do not translate into real improvements in our people’s daily lives. Economic growth and progress must have a human face. And that is why we are pursuing an aggressive national infrastructure agenda under our Big Push program to build roads, expand digital connectivity, construct schools and health facilities.
This strategic investment is opening up the length and breadth of our country, bridging the rural-urban divide, unlocking agricultural potential, and guaranteeing equitable access to basic services for every Ghanaian, no matter where they live in our country.
Through our flagship 24-hour Economy and Accelerated Exports Development Program and the soon-to-be-launched New Ghana Economy Policy, we are transforming Ghana into an industrial high-productivity hub. We are incentivizing round-the-clock commercial operations, driving value addition in agriculture, mining, and creating sustainable, dignified jobs for our vibrant youth and women.
Central to our national reset is a revolutionary expansion of social protection, universal health care, delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 1 on poverty, SDG 3 on good health and well-being, and SDG 10 on reduced inequalities. Ghana has officially launched a historic free primary health care program, ensuring that every Ghanaian can access essential primary health care services at their community level at zero cost.
This program has been hailed by the World Health Organization and the United Nations as a benchmark paradigm shift for the global South.
This model is currently being studied by other nations that are seeking to achieve true universal health coverage. Alongside our National Health Insurance Scheme, we’ve introduced a specialist fund, officially named Ghana Medical Trust Fund, but popularly referred to after my name, Mahama Cares. That guarantees Ghanaians suffering from non-communicable diseases such as renal failure, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes.
It guarantees that they receive subsidized, affordable, and life-saving care. I’ve always believed that democracy must deliver tangible social benefits. Citizens must experience democracy not only through the ballot box every four years, but through improved access to food, quality education, decent housing, accessible health care, and economic opportunities.
Mr. President, democracy loses its soul when it protects elite privileges while abandoning the vulnerable. And so Ghana remains an uncompromising beacon of constitutional democracy, media freedom, the rule of law, and peaceful transitions of power on the African continent. But these domestic achievements set the stage for two historic milestones ahead of us.
In March 2027, Ghana will celebrate its 70th anniversary of independence as the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa to break the shackles of colonial domination. And in January 2027, Ghana will proudly assume the chairmanship of the African Union.
I wish to set notice that we intend to use our AU chairmanship to champion continental integration, accelerate the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, push for peace and security in all the conflict zones of Africa, and ensure that Africa speaks on the global stage with one resolute, undivided, and confident voice.
Mr. President, the daunting crises confronting our world are not insurmountable. What we lack is not resources or intellect. What we lack is the political courage to see one another as a part of a single human family.
We must see each other not as strategic rivals, economic targets, or demographic threats, but as human beings who belong. That refugee fleeing violence belongs. That migrant seeking opportunity belongs.
That child in Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine belongs. The descendants of enslaved Africans seeking justice belong. The indigenous community protecting its ancestral lands and environment belongs.
The small island states threatened by rising oceans belong to humanity. The poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized belong. They belong to our common human family.
And because they belong, we must safeguard their dignity, we must enforce their rights, and most of all, we must hear their voices. When our first president, Osagefu Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, stood on the eve of our independence in 1957, he declared that “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent”. Today, from this respected global podium, we must expand that historic truth.
The freedom of any nation is insecure unless it is linked to the freedom of all humanity. In Ghana, we believe that our national prosperity is fragile unless it is a shared prosperity. Our global peace is unviable unless it is anchored in justice.
Let this General Assembly recommit itself to a world where belonging is used not to erect walls, but to build bridges, not to exclude, but to unite, not to degrade humanity, but to exalt. Let us speak truth with humility. Let us act with courage.
And as I said from the Ghana National Anthem, let us cherish fearless honesty in the statements that we deliver today at this podium and in the choices we make tomorrow. May God bless our shared wealth. May God bless my homeland, Ghana, and may God bless the United Nations.
I thank you. On behalf of the Assembly, I wish to thank the President of the Republic of Ghana.
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