Speech by H.E. President Olusegun Obasanjo at the G20 Leaders’ Summit, Johannesburg, South Africa

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Heads of State and Government,

I am here for the Accra Reset, a global South-anchored platform.

Allow me to begin by conveying special greetings from H.E. John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana, and African Union Champion for Reparations, the African Union’s continental theme for this year. He is also spearheading Accra Reset. President Mahama extends his deep appreciation to H.E. President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose leadership has guided this G20 cycle with clarity, courage, and profound commitment to justice.

Congratulations are due to South Africa and the African Union for their exceptional representation of the aspirations of Africa, Global Africa, and the wider Global South. This Johannesburg Summit has been defined by integrity of purpose, a clear focus on structural reform, and an unwavering commitment to ensure that the G20 delivers progress for all peoples and not just a privileged few.

We also acknowledge several important highlights of this year’s Presidency:

– the advancement of a more equitable global financial architecture;

– the strong emphasis on global health resilience and manufacturing sovereignty;

– the renewed momentum around digital public infrastructure and fair technology partnerships;

– the focus on inclusive growth and decent jobs; and

– the widening of Global South participation in multilateral decision-making.

Your Excellencies, these priorities resonate profoundly with the mission that several of your governments helped shape over the last three years. I speak of the Accra Reset, a Global South–anchored ambition to transform development cooperation into a system that is country-led, regionally empowered, and globally coherent.|

Today, on this historic platform, we humbly request continued cooperation between the G20, the South African Presidency, the African Union, and the Accra Reset.

We are pleased to announce that, as of this month:

– the interim Secretariat of the Accra Reset has formally commenced operations in Ghana;

– the Circle of Leaders has expanded to include more than two dozen former Heads of State and Heads of International Organisations from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean;

– a High-Level Panel is being convened to prepare a landmark report on restructuring global governance, to be submitted to a commissioning authority composed of Heads of State from across both the Global North and Global South.

These developments speak to a simple truth: we are entering a moment in world affairs when durable solutions must be co-created, not imposed; negotiated with fairness, not inherited from history; and built on sovereignty, dignity, common security and shared prosperity.

The Accra Reset stands ready to work closely with the G20. It is poised to serve as the connective tissue interlinking the public, private, and civil factions of Global South societies. It aims to work through the African Union and the South African Presidency to advance ongoing G20-enabled reforms in health governance, digital cooperation, development finance, investments with guarantees and assurance for investor, jobs for youth, wealth creation and resilient supply chains.

Our history of AID and loans has created an economy of dependency. To move forward, we must re-architect our economies based on trade and investment. We see this cooperation not as a parallel track, but as a strategic reinforcement of the agenda in finance and financial architecture championed in Leaders Declaration of 2025 G20 Summit in South Africa, mindful of inadequacy of AID which is drying up and borrowing which has become counterproductive for human capital development in Global Africa.

Your Excellencies,

On behalf of the interim Presidential Council, the Circle of Leaders, and the global coalition behind the Accra Reset, I express profound gratitude to President Ramaphosa, and all G20 members for the opportunity to mark the beginning of a new partnership between the G20 and the Accra Reset.

We stand ready to work, and to do so with humility, discipline, and unwavering resolve, to help shape a workable multilateral order for finance for development and for investment for this generation and the next. Through our collective efforts, we shall transition the international development system from endless aspirational targets to workable business models that drive real and durable change and collaboration for mutual interest.

Thank you for listening.