The Deputy Chief of Staff at the Presidency, Nana Oye Bampoe Addo, says the Accra Reset initiative is designed to close the gap between political commitments on health and the quality of healthcare services citizens receive across Africa.

Speaking during a panel discussion at the High-Level Interactive Policy Dialogue on "Advancing Africa's Health Agenda through Domestic Financing, Accountability and Strategic Innovations" in Accra on July 20, she said Africa has never lacked ideas or international partners but has often struggled to translate commitments into tangible outcomes.

Responding to a question on how the Accra Reset agenda would be implemented, Nana Oye said the initiative focuses on ensuring that policy commitments result in better healthcare delivery for ordinary Africans.

"For us in Africa, our health story has never lacked ideas or partners," she said.

"We have had the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978, which gave us primary healthcare as a pathway to health. We had the Abuja Declaration, which set our 15% target for domestic health financing.

"We have had the Global Fund, Gavi and many other initiatives that have invested billions into treatment and prevention."

Despite these interventions, she said implementation remains the continent's greatest challenge.

"For me, delivery is the distance between the commitment on paper and the service an African citizen receives," she said.

"The discipline of delivery starts with structure."

Nana Oye cited President John Mahama's recent remarks at a high-level panel in Dakar, where he stressed that the real measure of policy success lies in its impact on citizens.

"A mother may never read your report, but she will feel the impact, or she will suffer from the absence of a new framework," she quoted the President as saying.

According to her, political leadership is at the centre of the Accra Reset agenda, with the initiative establishing a governance structure that places current and former African presidents at the forefront of driving implementation.

"Under the Accra Reset, we have emphasised political leadership because it is all about political leadership," she said.

"We've placed a Presidential Council made up of former and sitting presidents at the very apex of the architecture. We have former heads of state and present heads of state personally committed to the Accra Reset agenda."

She explained that the initiative also includes a high-level panel and a dedicated secretariat to coordinate implementation at the community, national, regional and global levels.

Nana Oye said one of the three strategic pillars of the Accra Reset is the reform of the global health architecture to ensure international partnerships complement, rather than replace, domestic investments.

"We do not reject international cooperation. What we are seeking to do is reset international cooperation and build it on domestic resource mobilisation," she said.

She added that the initiative seeks to reduce duplication among development partners, streamline governance structures and promote equitable partnerships instead of dependency.

"We're looking at governance, innovation, regional specialisation and regulatory convergence so that we have one full regional market," she said.

According to her, the Accra Reset also advocates a unified national health financing framework that aligns domestic resources with external support, replacing multiple parallel donor programmes that often place competing demands on ministries of health and finance.

She said the approach aligns with the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals by promoting stronger domestic financing, improved coordination and more resilient health systems across the continent.