By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Sept 24, GNA – President John Dramani Mahama has announced that Ghana will use its Africa Union (AU) Chairmanship in 2027 to champion continental integration and accelerate the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
She would also push for peace and security in conflict zones and ensure that Africa speaks on the global stage with one resolute, undivided, and confident voice.
President Mahama made the disclosure in his remarks at the 81st United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York.
He noted that the daunting crises confronting the world were not insurmountable.
“What we lack is not resources or intellect; we lack the political courage to see one another as part of a single human family,” President Mahama said.
He said they must see each other not as strategic rivals, economic targets, or demographic threats, but as human beings who belong to each other.
Stressing on global unity, African bonding and integration, the President said: “The refugee fleeing violence belongs. The migrant seeking opportunity belongs.
“The child in Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine belongs. The descendants of enslaved Africans seeking justice belongs. The indigenous community protecting its ancestral environment belongs.”
He added: “The small island state threatened by rising oceans belongs. The poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalised belong. They belong to our common human family. And because they belong, we must safeguard their dignity, enforce their rights, and hear their voices.”
President Mahama said when Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President stood on the eve of Ghana’s independence in 1957, he declared that, “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.”
President Mahama underlined said the need for a historic truth, that, “the freedom of any nation is insecure unless it is linked to the freedom of all humanity.
“Our national prosperity is fragile unless it is shared. Our global peace is unviable unless it is anchored in justice.”
He urged the UN General Assembly to recommit itself to a world where belonging is used not to erect walls, but to build bridges; not to exclude, but to unite; not to degrade humanity, but to exalt it.
“Let us speak truth with humility. Let us act with courage. And let us cherish fearless honesty in the statements we deliver today, and in the choices we make tomorrow.”
President Mahama also announced that in March 2027, Ghana would celebrate its 70th anniversary of independence as the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa to break the shackles of colonial rule.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah