• Urges Shift From Aid To Investment
• Says Local Production Is Key To Prosperity

Vice President Kashim Shettima has called for homegrown, African-led solutions to the continent’s economic challenges, urging a decisive shift from import dependence and aid to local production and investment.
 
Speaking on Thursday at the High-Level Accra Reset Initiative meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos, Shettima said Africa’s prosperity must be built through domestic productive capacity, innovation, and policy clarity.
 
“Africa is no longer the periphery; it is the pulse of the world’s demographic and economic future,” the vice president said, stressing that prosperity cannot be “parachuted in” but must be “homegrown and earned.”
 
Citing Nigeria’s experience, Shettima pointed to the Dangote Refinery as evidence of what African capital and industrial ambition can achieve. 
 
He said the facility is positioning Nigeria to transition from a net importer to a net exporter of refined petroleum products.
 
“Africa cannot rise on applause alone. We rise when we build,” he said. “Nations move from price takers to value makers when production is matched with infrastructure and policy clarity.”
 
The vice president noted that although manufacturing’s share of Africa’s GDP declined from 16 per cent in 1980 to under 10 per cent by 2016, the continent has an opportunity to leapfrog through modular factories, artificial intelligence, and robotics, enabling faster industrialisation in the 21st century.
 
He also underscored the importance of human capital mobility, recalling that Africans in the diaspora remitted about $95 billion in 2024, roughly five per cent of Africa’s GDP and comparable to total foreign direct investment. “That is not charity,” he said, adding that free movement across Africa would allow skills and ideas to circulate, accelerating shared prosperity.
 
On Nigeria’s domestic lessons, Shettima said: “Markets and talent exist, yet resilience remains thin until demand is translated into domestic capability. Wealth given from outside is fragile; wealth created from within is enduring.”
 
Welcoming the Accra Reset Initiative, the vice president described it as a bold, African-led reimagining of the continent’s future, anchored on sovereignty, cooperation, and results rather than rhetoric. 
 
He highlighted Nigeria’s health-industrial strategy under the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain (PUHVAC), launched in October 2023, as part of efforts to build vaccine and medicine manufacturing capacity and secure “health sovereignty.”
 
“The Accra Reset is a call to move from dependency to dignity, from aid to investment. If we answer this call, the world will witness an African boom built on innovation, industry, and interdependence,” Shettima said.
 
Earlier, Ghana’s President, John Mahama, lamented Africa’s transactional relationship with the global north, warning that unilateral pursuits by global actors have kept the continent trapped in cycles of conflict and poverty. 
 
He said the Accra Reset Initiative, unveiled at the UN General Assembly, offers practical answers to the questions young Africans are asking about the continent’s place in a changing global order.
 
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo cautioned that in an era of disruption and reconfigured supply chains, countries unprepared for negotiation and execution risk becoming “bargaining chips.” 
 
Sovereignty, he said, requires discipline, coordination, and the capacity to implement decisions at scale.
 
Also speaking, former vice president Yemi Osinbajo said the forum aims to galvanise African governments to rethink economic transformation strategies and confront the challenges facing their people in a rapidly evolving global system