When President John Dramani Mahama mounted the podium in Belgrade on September 1 to mark the 65th anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement, (NAM) he delivered an economic manifesto for the Global South.
His core message was that political independence is hollow without economic sovereignty. And economic sovereignty is impossible if developing countries remain exporters of raw materials and importers of finished goods, while bearing the environmental and social costs of extraction.
That statement, made in the city where NAM was founded in 1961 by Kwame Nkrumah, Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sukarno, could not have been more timely.
For Ghana, the call is not rhetoric. It is already policy. In the past 18 months, the government has moved decisively from declaration to action on resource sovereignty.
It established the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) as the sole buyer and exporter of artisanal gold to curb smuggling and capture value.
In July 2026, it secured 30 per cent of large-scale gold output to be sold locally, refined domestically and banked as reserves under the Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Programme (GANRAP).
The government has further affirmed that no raw mineral ores — including manganese, bauxite and iron ore — will leave Ghana by 2030, with Cabinet this year directing a minimum of 50 per cent local processing from next year.
This is the practical meaning of resource sovereignty: retaining value, creating jobs, and building reserves at home.
The Daily Graphic believes this doctrine must become the anchor of Ghana’s development agenda and NAM’s collective bargaining strategy.
For decades, the structure of global trade has been rigged against Africa.
The continent that produces 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa has less than five per cent of the chocolate market.
This is not comparative advantage; it is structural dependence.
This is where resource sovereignty becomes geopolitical. If NAM members, who control a majority of the world’s critical minerals, coordinate their value-addition policies, they can reshape global supply chains.
If Ghana insists on refining bauxite before export, Indonesia bans raw nickel, and Zambia demands local processing of copper, the world must adjust.
President Mahama’s intervention in Belgrade links this economic reality to NAM’s founding principle of positive neutrality.
Quoting Dr Nkrumah, he reminded delegates that “our politics of positive neutrality is not passive or neutral politics.
This is affirmative politics based on our firm belief in positive action.”
That distinction matters in today’s multipolar world.
The President urged NAM to resist power bloc pressures and preserve strategic autonomy. In an era of US-China rivalry, Russia-West tensions, and weaponisation of trade, finance and technology, non-aligned countries must be neither silent spectators nor instruments of competing geopolitical interests.
Instead, he argued, NAM — the world’s second largest grouping after the UN — must be an independent collective voice for peace, dialogue, disarmament, development and justice.
Its diversity is its strength, but that strength must be measured not by numbers but by coordinated diplomacy and practical outcomes.
His examples were telling. He cited Ghana’s success at the UN General Assembly’s resolution condemning the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity was adopted on March 25, 2026, with 123 votes, largely from NAM solidarity.
He cited Sudan, where over 12 million people are displaced in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and Gaza, where civilians face a blockade of food, water and medicine, to argue that non-alignment cannot mean neutrality in the face of injustice.
From fires in Southern Europe to droughts in Africa and flash floods in China and Nepal, NAM must speak with one voice on climate finance, debt reform, digital inequality and reform of the global financial architecture.
President Mahama is right: NAM must move from declarations to action.
Belgrade 1961 gave the world political non-alignment. Belgrade 2026 must give it economic non-alignment — the right of nations to own, process and benefit from their resources.
That is the true path to development.
