Why the World should brace for Africa's new generation of dealmakers

For much of my public life, I have sat in rooms where the fate of nations was negotiated line by line. Those moments are rarely dramatic from the outside. They unfold in dense briefing papers, in long evenings parsing clauses, in decisions that determine whether a country retains control over its future or quietly yields it away. In today’s fractured geopolitical landscape, such moments have multiplied. Yet the institutions designed to support sovereign decision-making have not kept pace.

This is the context in which the Accra Reset has emerged. I invite you to avoid the temptation of rolling your eyes at yet another slogan or rhetorical flourish. I assure you that Accra Reset is a practical undertaking through and through. Led by Heads of State, supported by former presidents/prime ministers (“Guardians’ Circle”) and global partners, it has one overriding aim - to rebuild development cooperation around a single organising idea: sovereignty as capability.

Countries cannot navigate a volatile era of technology shocks, debt restructuring, climate risk, and digital transformation without the ability to negotiate from a position of savviness and confidence. The Accra Reset seeks to strengthen that capability by aligning political leadership, institutional tools, and professional networks across the Global South.

The initiative has several pillars, but one flagship program, launched last week during the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, deserves particular attention from policymakers and international partners alike. It is called the Sovereign Negotiators program (working title: Global Union of Negotiators for Sovereignty - GUNS), informally known as “TopGuns.” The problem it addresses is deeply familiar to anyone who has governed or worked in multilateral negotiations.

Across Africa and much of the developing world, brilliant public servants routinely sit across negotiating tables from teams backed by decades of institutional continuity. These counterparts arrive with specialised lawyers, financial engineers, data analysts, and intelligence networks that quietly track every precedent. By contrast, many sovereign negotiators operate in relative isolation. Institutional memory is scattered across ministries and retired brains. Lessons from past deals fade with political transitions. Negotiations become episodic rather than cumulative. Over time, this imbalance shapes outcomes in ways that no patriotic proclamation or communiqué can correct.

The Sovereign Negotiators programme begins with a simple insight: development is negotiated. Whether the issue is climate finance, digital trade rules, mineral concessions, pharmaceutical procurement, or sovereign debt restructuring, the quality of negotiation determines the distribution of risk, value, and sovereignty. Financing gaps often attract attention, yet capability gaps can be just as decisive.

TopGuns is therefore designed to be far more than a training initiative. True, it is a professional corps of elite actors. But participants, despite their pedigree, are also expected to move through rigorous executive bootcamps, simulations based on real-world case studies, and scenario laboratories that reflect the complex intersections of geopolitics, technology, and markets. They will learn how to interpret complex contracts, evaluate digital infrastructure agreements, and anticipate the pressures that shape outcomes long before negotiators sit at the table. More importantly, they will enter a network bound by trust and shared discipline. When a negotiator confronts a challenging counterpart, they should be able to consult peers who have faced similar situations elsewhere.

This model draws on lessons from decades of negotiation across sectors. Consider the debt crises that have reshaped fiscal policy across multiple continents. In many cases, governments entered restructuring talks without access to comparable analytical resources or coordinated peer support. Whilst expensive global north consulting firms abound, their wares produce only contingent relief. Their work never integrates long-term into the domestic political economy of the countries that hire them. Mistakes are thus bound to recur, generating deal flow for such international consultants but limited benefit to citizens. A structured community of negotiators could have strengthened preparation, improved clause scrutiny, and accelerated learning across jurisdictions, while keeping long-term outcomes in mind.

Or think of mineral development agreements that locked countries into unfavourable revenue structures for decades. A shared case library and mentorship framework might have enabled negotiators to benchmark terms and avoid repeating costly mistakes.

TopGuns is also grounded in mentorship. Members of the Accra Reset Guardians Circle, including former Heads of State and senior multilateral leaders, have committed to accompanying participants through the programme. Our role is not to lecture from afar but to transmit hard-earned lessons about judgment, resilience, and ethical leadership. Many of us negotiated through crises ranging from health emergencies (such as the Ebola epidemic in my own country) to financial turmoil. Those experiences carry insights that textbooks rarely capture.

Critically, the programme is embedded within a broader architecture. The Accra Reset is anchored in a lean institutional ecosystem, which brings together incumbent leaders, former statespeople, intellectual partners, and a professional secretariat. Its theory of change recognises that countries face what has been called a “Triple Dependency Burden”: exposure to geopolitical competition, reliance on volatile external financing, and limited influence over global rule-making. Strengthening negotiation capability is one way to reduce that burden by ensuring that countries shape agreements rather than simply adapt to them.

What makes this effort different from conventional executive education is its emphasis on continuity and practice, even if the training aspects of the program rely on a network of governance and public administration schools that also provide general executive education. Because negotiation expertise must survive electoral cycles and ministerial reshuffles, it must be institutional rather than individual. TopGuns, therefore, combines credentialing, peer exchange, and practical tools designed to be reused across negotiations. In doing so, it aims to move sovereignty from rhetoric toward disciplined practice. A truly new discipline of “Sovereign Studies” with a complete operational curriculum.

Sceptics may ask whether such initiatives can truly shift the balance in a world of entrenched power asymmetries. That is a fair question. No training programme alone can eliminate structural inequality. Yet history shows that capability compounds. Countries that invest in negotiation systems, knowledge-sharing, and institutional memory steadily improve their outcomes over time. They become more strategic in coalition-building, more precise in contract drafting, and more confident in asserting national priorities while sustaining partnerships.

The Accra Reset does not seek to replace multilateralism or to withdraw from global cooperation. On the contrary, it recognises that cooperation is unavoidable in a world defined by interdependence. What must change is the quality of participation. Sovereign states must arrive at the negotiating table prepared, connected, and equipped with the tools required to pursue equitable agreements.

In an era when global governance is undergoing profound strain, initiatives that strengthen capability rather than merely produce declarations deserve careful attention. The Sovereign Negotiators program represents one such effort. It is an investment in the quiet architecture that determines whether ambitions become reality. If it succeeds, future negotiators from Africa and the wider Global South will no longer stand alone. They will carry the collective experience of a community that has learned from the past and is prepared to shape the future. The frightfully atrocious deals that some African and Global South countries continue to sign in the extractive sector, in the foreign investment context, and during multilateral negotiations shall then reduce over time.

The Accra Reset remains a work in progress, as all meaningful reforms are. But the ambition behind TopGuns is unambiguous. We are determined to cultivate a generation of negotiators who can navigate complexity with wisdom and integrity. They shall be the chosen vanguard steeped in the knowledge that sovereignty in the twenty-first century is not claimed by bombast but negotiated step by step in the cold and calculating chess play of international dealmaking.