Africa declares end to aid dependency at WEF

AFRICAN leaders continued their push for an ambitious initiative at the World Economic Forum (WEF) aimed at fundamentally restructuring the continent’s development model, calling for an end to aid dependency and asserting greater control over natural resources worth trillions of dollars.

The Accra Reset Initiative, spearheaded by several African Presidents including Ghana’s President, John Mahama, represents a coordinated push by the Global South to rearchitect the international system.

According to Accra Reset Initiative, even though leaders from across the Global South, representing four continents, are equal drivers of the agenda, African nations were out in force at Davos to make sure the continent’s voice was heard loud and clear.

Top issues on the agenda included the critical need to mobilise domestic capital, negotiate collectively on critical minerals, and build regional manufacturing capacity rather than relying on traditional development assistance that leaders say has failed to deliver sustained prosperity.

“A sovereign negotiators’ club and a strategic blueprint for “sovereign prosperity spheres,” described as “minimally viable geo-economic platforms” for regional dealmaking, are some of the Accra Reset strategies showcased at Davos. “Our world, as we know, is at an inflexion point.

The global multinational governance system universally agreed and accepted after the Second World War is breaking down,” Mahama told a packed conference room on the sidelines of the forum in Davos.

“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.”

The initiative comes as global humanitarian assistance shrinks and European countries redirect overseas development aid toward defence spending.

The Accra Reset leaders described what they called a “triple burden” that has trapped African nations: dependence on others for basic sustenance, marginalisation by the great powers in the design of global institutions, and vulnerability to commodity market mood swings and other cycles, despite Africa supplying the world’s critical minerals (yet “capturing almost none of the value”).

“This is not sovereignty. It’s a trap. And it’s getting worse,” Mahama said at the event.

4 trillion US dollars in Domestic Capital

A central pillar of the reset is mobilising Africa’s substantial but underutilised domestic capital pools.Samaila Zubairu, CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation, presented research showing the continent holds 4 trillion US dollars in domestic capital, far exceeding the external financing typically sought from international donors.

“We must take ownership of our development, we must be intentionally funding our development,” Zubairu told the gathering. “We found that we have $4 trillion of domestic capital pools on the continent. And I want us to all reflect on that, because most of what we seek from outside is a fraction of this.”

The breakdown includes 2.5 trillion US dollars in African banks, 500 billion US dollars in pension funds, 300 billion US dollars in insurance firms, $180 billion in sovereign wealth funds, and over 200 billion US dollars in public development banks.

“What we need to be doing now is to accept that we’re not capital scarce, we’re capital trapped,” Zubairu said. “We need to be looking at how we ensure capital flows from where it is now to where we need it the most.”

Former Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo reinforced this point, noting that huge amounts of African money are invested in US treasuries rather than locally.

“Funding is possible. “And I think a lot of it will come down to our ability to sit down and think through these things and achieve the results,” he said.

The point about strategic redesign based on deep insight into how the world is evolving was also echoed by Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand.

From projects to platforms

Dr Haytham El Maayergi, Executive Vice President of the African Export-Import Bank, outlined a strategic shift from isolated projects to integrated regional platforms.

He suggested thinking beyond discrete projects. “We should think of corridors, regional coordination, and Africa,” he said.

El Maayergi emphasised creating sustainable, irreversible structures that attract diaspora investment, global funds, and pension capital by packaging multicountry projects with value addition to raw materials, integrated logistics, and alignment with the African Continental Free Trade Area.

He noted a critical challenge: “We have India and China that also have 1.3 billion, like us, but they have one blueprint that they’re growing with. We have 50- plus blueprints. And unless we start to create a blueprint, we’ll always miss people who want a cohesive plan to fund.”

Policy clarity and political will

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape, offering a Pacific perspective on resource sovereignty, stressed the importance of policy clarity for foreign direct investment.

His government now captures 55% of natural resource revenues and recently renegotiated a major gold mine to secure 51% government ownership while preserving investor returns.

“I think aid dependency has held us all back. We should be stepping out,” Marape said, emphasising that policy clarity must be “intergenerational, not just one generation, not based on political cycles.”

South Africa’s Minister of Small Business Development, Stella NdabeniAbrahams, challenged African leaders to move beyond rhetoric to action. “We know all the problems in Africa.

We know what we have in terms of the resources that we have. We know what we are not doing, but there’s no will to invest in that,” she said.

“Is Africa learning to speak with one voice, and not indicate left, and turn right?” Ndabeni-Abrahams asked, noting that while African expertise drives innovation globally in sectors from artificial intelligence to engineering, the continent fails to incentivise these skilled workers to invest their capabilities at home.

Health financing and domestic mobilisation

Though the Accra Reset is a broad-based Global South development platform, health is seen as a vital entry point due to the urgency for post-dependency reform sparked by recent aid cuts.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, DirectorGeneral of the World Health Organisation, highlighted a striking financial reality: Africa loses $88 billion annually to illicit financing while receiving between 55 billion US dollars and 74 billion US dollars in aid.

“The illicit financing money is already higher than what Africa gets from donations,” Tedros said, noting that many leaders now recognise dependency as a mindset issue requiring fundamental change.

He cited immediate revenue mobilisation efforts through taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and sugary drinks in countries including Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, while longer-term solutions focus on public health insurance and social health insurance systems. Tedros emphasised that remaining development assistance must empower rather than replace country capacity.

“The funding flow should respect the principle of one policy, one plan, one budget, one report, and the country being in the driver’s seat,” he said.

Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, a member of the initiative’s inaugural presidential council, emphasised action over rhetoric.

“Sovereignty is not a slogan. It must be proved, built and delivered through actions and results,” he said, noting that for the Great Lakes Region, “investable peace and harmony cannot be consolidated by declarations alone” but through “production, employment, credible regional value chains and effectively shared prosperity.”

The DRC confirmed that it was actively supporting the Great Lakes Sovereign Prosperity Sphere concept designed by Accra Reset.

Other spheres mentioned at the event include the Nile Basin and Niger Basin platforms. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, serving as a member of the Accra Reset Guardians’ Circle, contextualised the reset within global disruption.

“We are living through a new age of disruption, uncertainty, and unpredictability,” he said. “In such moments, countries that are not organised for negotiation and execution do not merely fall behind.They become bargaining chips at best, and footstools at the worst.”

Trade and sovereignty

Santiago Wills, representing World Trade Organisation Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, acknowledged that calls for a global reset are “both understandable and necessary” given intense strain on the global trading system from conflicts, climate shocks, and fragmentation risks.

“A meaningful reset is about rebuilding trust, updating rules, and ensuring that trade keeps delivering for people around the world,” Wills said. “The task before us is not to reverse globalization but to rethink it.

What we need is reglobalization, a form of integration that spreads gains more fairly, reduces systemic vulnerabilities, and reflects today’s realities.”

He emphasised that the Accra Reset’s concept of “sovereignty as execution” resonates with trade realities. “True economic sovereignty lies in the capacity to build competitive value chains, to negotiate effectively, and to access markets on fair and predictable terms,” Wills said.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey pledged practical partnership, noting that “traditional development cooperation no longer responds to the need for high-impact, resilient solutions” with “too many declarations, too few delivery machines.”

“Let Davos not be another summit of eloquence. Let it be a springboard for execution,” Botchwey said. •

Source: The World Economic Forum