President John Dramani Mahama has called for a fundamental shift in Ghana’s relationship with global philanthropic organizations, urging a move away from fragmented, short-term interventions towards partnerships that strengthen national institutions, build local capacity and deliver development outcomes aligned with Ghana’s priorities.
President Mahama made the call at a high-level Presidential Funders’ Roundtable in New York, which brought together representatives of about 20 major philanthropic organizations and foundations based in the United States.
They included the Gates Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
The engagement, organized by the Open Society Foundations on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, provided a platform for senior leaders of major global foundations to explore a new approach to international development cooperation.
President Mahama said the changing global development landscape presented Ghana and other countries in the Global South with an opportunity to rethink their relationships with international development partners.
He said the objective should not merely be to find alternative sources of funding when traditional development finance changes, but to build institutional capabilities that enable countries to exercise greater control over their own development.
“Development finance can change quickly. Funding priorities shift, and political decisions taken thousands of miles away can have immediate consequences for programmes, institutions and communities in our countries.”
President Mahama said Africa already had a clear development vision through Agenda 2063, but translating that ambition into tangible results remained the greater challenge.
“That requires institutions that can execute, the ability to mobilize and manage resources well, stronger negotiating capability, programmes that can attract the right forms of finance, and systems that allow us to account properly for results and learn from them,” he said.
He said Ghana’s Accra Reset was anchored on the principle that sovereignty must be matched by the capacity to exercise it.
According to him, greater country leadership required governments to establish clearer priorities, improve coordination and financial management, and build institutions capable of delivering measurable results.
“We cannot ask our partners to give us greater room to lead while avoiding the difficult work that leadership requires,” he said.
At the same time, the President challenged international development partners to examine whether their own approaches were sufficiently designed to strengthen national institutions and create greater space for countries to lead.
President Mahama said philanthropic organizations had a distinctive role to play because foundations could support areas that conventional development finance and commercial capital might not readily fund.
He identified institutional capacity-building, early-stage programme development, public goods, social priorities and evidence generation as areas where philanthropic support could have a catalytic impact.
“The value of an intervention may lie in the institution that becomes stronger, the evidence that leads to a better public decision, the programme that becomes ready for larger-scale financing, or an approach that proves itself and can then be taken further,” he said.
The President also called for greater coherence among philanthropic organizations, warning that fragmented funding arrangements could place a considerable burden on national institutions.
He said governments were often required to manage multiple funding cycles, reporting requirements and due-diligence processes, which could divert institutional resources from implementation.
A key component of President Mahama’s new approach is the designation of the Millennium Development
Authority (MiDA) as Ghana’s institutional gateway to global philanthropy.
He said his decision to designate MiDA as the Government’s focal institution for international philanthropic partnerships and grant coordination was intended to provide foundations with a clear and credible channel through which to engage the Government.
“MiDA gives us an institution with experience of working to demanding international standards of procurement, financial management, delivery and accountability,” he said.
President Mahama explained that MiDA’s role would be to connect philanthropic partners with the appropriate parts of government while ensuring that relevant ministries, the Accra Reset team, civil society organizations and other delivery partners remained involved.
He stressed that country ownership should not mean lower standards for international partners.
“Our responsibility is to build institutions capable of meeting those standards and to give partners confidence that resources can be traced, results can be demonstrated, and lessons from implementation can inform what happens next,” he said.
President Mahama invited the foundations represented at the roundtable to move beyond traditional funding relationships and explore partnerships in which their expertise, networks, evidence and institutional capabilities could complement Ghana’s development priorities.
He said the nature of support required would depend on the particular development challenge.
While some areas might require grants, he said others could benefit more from technical expertise, research, institutional support or philanthropic capital capable of attracting additional development finance and private investment.
“Ghana, for its part, must be prepared to lead, coordinate and account for what follows,” he said.
He added that MiDA would provide a route for philanthropic partners interested in working with Ghana to advance discussions and connect them with the appropriate government institutions.
The President expressed hope that Ghana could demonstrate that stronger national leadership could coexist with strong accountability, while ensuring that philanthropic partnerships built institutions and capabilities that would endure beyond individual grants.
The roundtable formed part of President Mahama’s wider engagements during the 81st UN General Assembly and reflected his broader call for international partners to move from short-term programme financing towards long-term institutional and national capacity-building.
