By Bertha Demah
President John Dramani Mahama, yesterday charged Africa countries to assume full over their natural resources in order to secure the well-being of their people, especially given the huge decline in humanitarian aid to the continent.
“In this era of global uncertainty, Africa must exercise sovereignty over its natural resources to raise the necessary funds to ensure the well-being of its citizens,” Mahama stated.
Addressing the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly yesterday in New York Mahama revealed that humanitarian aid to Africa has decreased by 40% since July 2024, a development he described as alarming amid ongoing global uncertainty.
Calling for a shift in Africa’s approach to foreign investment, Mahama condemned the longstanding practice of granting vast concessions to foreign interests with little benefit to local communities.
“The days of parcelling out vast concession areas to foreign interests for exploitation must come to an end. We will continue to welcome foreign investment, but we must negotiate better for a bigger share of the natural resources that belong to us,” he asserted.
Mahama expressed deep frustration over the persistent image of African communities suffering from poverty and disease, while living adjacent to wealth-generating resource zones controlled by foreign companies.
“We are tired of the continued image of poverty-stricken, disease-ridden rural communities, living at the periphery of huge foreign-controlled natural resource concession areas, we are tired of having people extract the most they can from us and, in return, offer us the very least by way of respect, consideration, and dignity,” he said.
President Mahama also criticized Western nations for their handling of migration, climate responsibility, and historical injustices, urging world leaders to abandon euphemisms and face the truth.
“Let’s dispense with euphemisms and dog-whistles and speak frankly, It’s not a mystery that when leaders of Western nations complain of their migration problems, they are often referring to immigrants from the Global South,” the president stressed.
He noted that many such migrants are climate refugees, forced from their homes by environmental degradation caused disproportionately by emissions from the Global North.
“The Global North emits 75% more greenhouse gases than the Global South. However, the effects of climate change are more severe in the Global South because we lack the resources to address them effectively, When the desert encroaches and our villages and towns become unlivable, we are forced to flee,” he explained.
Citing poet Warsan Shire, Mahama brought a human face to the migrant experience, quoting from her poem Home:“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land… No one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled mean something more than journey.”
He firmly rejected the normalisation of xenophobia and racism, urging the international community to resist hateful narratives saying, “We cannot normalise cruelty. We cannot normalise hatred. We cannot normalise xenophobia and racism.”
Mahama emphasized that migrants are not threats but contributors to society, referencing successful figures of Ghanaian descent around the world, including, Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, the first Black female federal judge in California; Peter Bossman, a Ghanaian-born doctor and Slovenia’s first Black mayor; T-Michael, a renowned Ghanaian-Norwegian designer; and Kofi Annan, the late UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
“These are not invaders or criminals,” These are people who have brought great distinction to the countries they now call home,” he advised.
