President John Dramani Mahama addressing the UN assembly
President John Dramani Mahama has said that he meant every word he said during his address at the 80th United Nations General Assembly.
Speaking to Wode Maya in a video shared on Facebook on Friday, October 17, 2025, in response to the praise he received after his speech, the President said such reactions are expected “when you speak from the heart.”
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According to him, he carefully crafted his message on the topics he addressed, including reparations, the global system, and the need for Africa to be given a place on the UN Security Council.
“When you speak from the heart, that’s how it comes across. And so, you need to put your thoughts into your speech and own the speech and that is what I did. I sat and crafted it and I meant every word in there. I talked about reparations, the global system and how it is changing and how it has been unjust to Africans and in any new global order that succeeds it.
“There must be justice and equity for Africa, including having an equal say in international global institutions like the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the multilateral financial institutions, the IMF, the World Bank, and all that. Africa must have a greater say in all these institutions,” he said.
President Mahama further raised concerns that the system is structured in a way that does not favor the African continent and leaves it sidelined.
He specifically spoke about how, even though some African countries are major exporters of raw materials to the Western world, it is the West that determines and dictates the prices of the finished products to Africans.
“Aside from that, the current world order is rigged against Africa. And so, if you look at the colonial patterns of trade that were established by our colonial masters, they are the same patterns of trade. Railways lead to only where there are resources, and they lead from there to the ports in order to extract those resources and export them to other destinations. We continue to live as colonial slaves,” he said.
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“Let me call it new colonial slaves, because we have a flag and we have independence. But still, the system is rigged such that we have to export materials raw to our former colonial masters. They use those resources to produce, manufacture, and finish goods, and then determine the prices of those goods and export them back to us. But when we export the raw materials, we don’t determine the price. We don’t determine the price of cocoa and gold. Cocoa doesn’t grow in Europe, and yet Europe determines how much cocoa should be purchased for and so these are all the kinds of things that we need to look at.”
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