Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo delivered a landmark address at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, formally announcing the commencement of the Accra Reset’s interim Secretariat in Ghana. Speaking on behalf of the initiative’s spearhead, President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, Obasanjo highlighted Mahama’s transformative leadership in reshaping global development cooperation.
Obasanjo told assembled world leaders that the Global South-anchored Accra Reset platform has significantly expanded its Circle of Leaders to include more than two dozen former Heads of State and international organisation leaders from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean. He conveyed special greetings from President Mahama, who is also the African Union Champion for Reparations, and extended deep appreciation to South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa for his leadership of the G20 cycle.
The Accra Reset represents a fundamental shift in development philosophy, moving away from what Obasanjo described as “an economy of dependency” created by traditional aid and loans. “To move forward, we must re-architect our economies based on trade and investment,” the former Nigerian leader declared. He emphasized that the initiative aims to transform development cooperation into a system that is “country-led, regionally empowered, and globally coherent,” marking a departure from decades of top-down approaches.
The launch of the Secretariat in Accra signals a new phase for the initiative, which President Mahama has championed as a vehicle for ensuring that global governance reforms are “co-created, not imposed; negotiated with fairness, not inherited from history.” A High-Level Panel is being convened to prepare a landmark report on restructuring global governance, which will be submitted to a commissioning authority composed of Heads of State from both the Global North and Global South. Obasanjo positioned the Accra Reset as a crucial “connective tissue interlinking the public, private, and civil factions of Global South societies” and ready to work closely with the G20 to transition international development “from endless aspirational targets to workable business models that drive real and durable change.”
Ruth Abla ADJORLOLO
