President John Mahama has advocated the scaling up of green and blue bonds across the continent to finance environmental protection, clean energy, and sustainable agriculture.

“Ghana is exploring these options alongside broadening the tax base, digitising revenue collection, and enhancing domestic capital markets to reduce dependency on external borrowing,” he stated in his remarks at the opening of the African Union Conference on Debt in Lomé, Togo.

The three-day meeting, which is being convened by the African Union Commission’s Department for Economic Development, Tourism, Trade, Industry, and Minerals (ETTIM) is the theme: “Africa’s Public Debt Management Agenda: Restoring and Safeguarding Debt Sustainability.”

The conference will convene AU Member States, policymakers, financial experts, and key stakeholders, including representatives from Ministries of Finance, African Central Banks, Regional Economic Communities, African Multilateral Financial Institutions, and Civil Society Organisations.

President Mahama underscored that African leaders must acknowledge what was not working.

“And what is not working, the first is that the G20 Common Framework remains slow and creditor-driven,” he said.

The G20 Common Framework is a debt treatment initiative for Low-Income Countries (LICs) with unsustainable debt. 

It aims to provide a structured approach to debt restructuring by coordinating official creditors (including Paris Club members and others like China) to facilitate timely, orderly, and durable debt treatment, as well as ensure fair burden-sharing between official and private creditors.

The President said that of the five African countries that applied for the G20 Common Framework, only three had seen material progress under this framework.

He mentioned that the next was vulture funds and aggressive litigation undermined good faith and restructuring efforts, and the third was that SGRA reallocation, which remained far below the $100 billion splash for Africa.

He said the issues demanded multilateral reform, and Africa’s voice must be heard at the table.

“Ghana is committed to rebuilding its fiscal buffers, strengthening our institutions, and promoting inclusive growth,” he said.

“But our fiscal consolidation must not come at the cost of social protection. And so, our strategy includes three of the following. One, protecting investments in education, youth empowerment, and rural development.”

President Mahama said the second was enhancing debt transparency through the establishment of an independent fiscal council and the third was expanding the role of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund to crowd in private capital.

He said their goal was not just to reduce their debts, but to transform their economy, saying “Debt must not erode our dignity or delay our development”.

“It must finance opportunity and lay the foundation for intergenerational progress.”

Touching on what was the continental call to action? President Mahama said this moment and the conference at Lome must be the turning point, not only for Ghana but for Africa as a whole.

He said he, therefore, joins his colleagues in calling for a common African position ahead of the 2025 G20 summit to demand timely, fair, and transparent debt restructuring frameworks.

He also called for standardised debt transparency benchmarks across the African Union and the integration of climate adaptation and sustainable development goals into their national debt strategies.