From Accra to Davos: President Mahama revives Nkrumah and Nyerere’s vision for a United Africa
President John Dramani Mahama’s speech at the Davos Convening on the Accra Reset on January 22, 2026, stands as one of the most compelling and forward-looking addresses delivered by an African leader in recent years. Speaking amid the elite gatherings of the World Economic Forum, he blended national pride with an uncompromising continental vision, reviving the spirit of pan-African unity that defined the independence era.
The Accra Reset is a bold, Africa-led initiative launched by President John Dramani Mahama in September 2025 during the United Nations General Assembly.
It goes far beyond a simple statement and functions as a practical, structured plan to transform the global systems that have long disadvantaged African nations and the wider Global South.
While individual countries can achieve strong progress, such as Ghana’s recent economic stabilization, these successes remain vulnerable without wider change.
The Accra Reset therefore works to move from single-country achievements to a unified, continent-wide overhaul of the development approach.
It directly addresses today’s challenges, including weakening international cooperation, rising debt pressures, unfair trade practices, climate injustice, and fragile health systems. Above all, it demands that Africa take full ownership of its future instead of relying on external aid or externally imposed solutions.
The goals of the Accra Reset are clear and ambitious. It aims to redesign outdated global institutions, financing tools, and partnerships to create fairer conditions in debt relief, trade regulations, climate funding, and health governance.
It focuses on true self-reliance by strengthening domestic resources, building skills, growing industries, achieving health sovereignty, and redirecting African capital currently held abroad back to local priorities.
The initiative promotes sharing and scaling successful strategies across countries, building genuine partnerships based on equality instead of charity, and enabling stronger collective action through leadership councils, expert panels, and shared structures.
Mahama opened by recounting Ghana’s swift economic recovery under his renewed leadership.
In just his first year back in office, the country has moved from debt distress and crisis to macroeconomic stability marked by single-digit inflation, a strengthened currency, and growing business confidence. “We’ve shown that democracy works and that change is possible when
leadership is focused and accountable to the people, ” he declared.
These gains are real and measurable, yet he refused to treat them as an endpoint.
With striking candor he warned: “However admirable Ghana’s turnaround story is, we cannot be a jewel in the dirt.” He insisted that isolated national successes, no matter how impressive, remain vulnerable in a fractured continent. “Ghana’s success alone is not enough,” he said.
“We must work together as Africa. We must knit together the patchwork of success stories.”
That single sentence captured both humility and ambition, refusing to let national achievement become a source of complacency.
The most powerful moment came when he described the current global situation as “a trap that is getting worse.” In quiet reflection, he said, he had reached a clear conclusion: “Crisis creates Clarity.
The clarity is this: We must build our own capacity to act.” This was not mere rhetoric.
Mahama called for scaling proven models across African countries and the Global South, moving beyond the reset of one nation to the reset of the entire development paradigm.
He positioned the Accra Reset Initiative as the practical framework for that transformation, one rooted in African agency rather than external prescription.
What made the speech truly bold was its fearless delivery in Davos itself, a setting often dominated by the language of global capital and Western-led solutions. Mahama did not soften his critique of dependency, unequal trade rules, or the debt architecture that continues to constrain the continent.
Instead he demanded that Africa prepare to negotiate its future on its own terms, investing in skills, industrial capacity, strategic partnerships, and above all, unity. That directness, delivered without apology or deference, marked a rare departure from the cautious diplomacy typical of such forums.
This message carries deep echoes of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s founding president and one of Africa’s greatest pan-African thinkers. Nkrumah spent his life arguing that political independence without economic unity would leave African states exposed to new forms of domination.
In works such as Africa Must Unite, he insisted that only a united continent could protect itself from external interference, industrialize on its own terms, and restore the dignity stolen by centuries of exploitation.
He dreamed of a United States of Africa with shared institutions, common economic policies, and collective bargaining power on the world stage.
Mahama’s words bring Nkrumah’s vision into the present. Where Nkrumah warned against neo-colonial traps, Mahama identifies modern equivalents in debt cycles, unequal global partnerships, and fragmented responses to climate and health crises.
Where Nkrumah called for continental government to achieve true sovereignty, Mahama proposes knitting together national
successes into a coherent continental strategy. Both leaders reject aid dependency in favor of self-reliance and both place ordinary Africans, farmers, traders, youth, and workers at the center of the transformation.
Mahama’s emphasis on building internal capacity and collective action also resonates strongly with the philosophy of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding president and another towering figure in African socialism and pan-Africanism. Nyerere championed Ujamaa, meaning “familyhood” in Kiswahili, as a model of African socialism grounded in communal values, rural self-reliance, and egalitarianism. He believed that true development must come from within, drawing on traditional African principles of cooperation rather than imported capitalist or socialist models.
Nyerere was equally fervent about unity, famously stating that “Without unity, there is no future for Africa” and that “Unity will not make us rich, but it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated.” While he favored a gradual approach to continental integration, differing from Nkrumah ’ s more immediate push for unification, both shared an unwavering commitment to African self-determination and collective strength against external domination.
Mahama’s speech marries these legacies seamlessly. His call to scale successes continent-wide echoes Nyerere’s vision of self-reliant communities linked through shared purpose, while his insistence on breaking free from worsening global traps aligns with Nyerere’s rejection of dependency in favor of indigenous solutions.
Together, Nkrumah’s bold continental ambition, Nyerere’s grounded emphasis on communal self-reliance, and Mahama’s contemporary application form a powerful continuum of African thought: unity is essential, capacity must be homegrown, and development must serve the people rather than perpetuate external control.
Theboldness of Mahama’s speech lies in its refusal to settle for incremental gains or polite requests.
He confronted global elites with Africa’s realities, reminded African leaders of their responsibility, and revived Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s unfinished project with practical urgency. In doing so, he transformed a moment of national celebration into a rallying cry for continental renaissance.
As Ghana continues its recovery and Africa faces mounting global pressures, this address offers more than inspiration. It provides a clear roadmap: unity is not a luxury but a necessity; capacity must be built from within; and the future must be negotiated, constructed, and owned by Africans themselves.
In Accra, across the continent, and far beyond, the message is unmistakable: Africa’s time is now, and it will be seized through collective resolve.
