President John Dramani Mahama held a series of bilateral meetings on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, securing commitments on trade, technology and economic support.
His engagements in New York included United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Kenyan President William Ruto, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
The day’s meetings ranged from pan-African coordination to a request for Swiss assistance in using artificial intelligence to close Ghana’s domestic revenue mobilisation gaps.
President Mahama also met one of the leading candidates to succeed Guterres at the head of the United Nations, placing Ghana inside a contest now moving toward its decisive stage.
Kenya And A Unified African Voice
The meeting with Ruto covered expanding bilateral trade, bolstering regional security, strengthening diplomatic ties and unifying Africa’s voice on global platforms.
Both leaders drew on a relationship with deep roots, since ties between Ghana and Kenya trace back to the early pan-African independence movements that linked Accra and Nairobi in the struggle against colonial rule.
Ruto commended President Mahama for spearheading the Accra Reset agenda, acknowledging his efforts to rally global attention toward greater self-financing and financial independence for African nations.
That endorsement carries weight for an initiative Mahama launched at last year’s assembly and is preparing to carry into the African Union when Ghana assumes the chairmanship in January 2027.
Jordan Explores New Trade Partnerships
Talks with King Abdullah II focused on expanding economic cooperation, fostering bilateral growth and exploring new trade partnerships.
The engagement points to an effort to widen Ghana’s commercial relationships beyond its traditional partners in Europe, North America and Asia. Jordan’s position as a regional trade and logistics hub in the Middle East offers a possible route into markets Ghanaian exporters have largely left unexplored.
AI And Revenue Mobilisation In Swiss Talks
The most specific request of the day came in the meeting with Swiss President Guy Parmelin, where President Mahama outlined his administration’s strategies to revive the national economy despite what he described as inherited challenges.
He called for a Swiss partnership to strengthen Ghana’s decentralisation framework, and identified artificial intelligence as a tool Ghana wants to draw from Switzerland to close domestic revenue mobilisation gaps.
That request targets one of the government’s persistent problems. Ghana collects a smaller share of national income in taxes than many of its peers, and the administration has argued that stronger collection, rather than new taxes, is the sustainable route to financing public services.
Using data analytics to identify unregistered businesses, detect under-declaration and match taxpayer records is a practical application of the technology, though the results depend on the quality of the underlying data.
A Meeting With A Frontrunner To Lead The UN
President Mahama also met Rebeca Grynspan, Costa Rica’s candidate for United Nations Secretary-General. The former Costa Rican vice-president, who heads the UN trade and development agency, has taken leave from that post to campaign.
Her candidacy is at a delicate point. Grynspan led the Security Council’s third informal straw poll on 18 September with nine encouraging votes, ahead of Guyana’s UN ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett on eight, though neither has secured the support needed to rule out a veto by a permanent member.
Further polls are expected once the General Assembly summit ends, and no woman has led the organisation since its founding in 1945. Eight candidates are in the race, among them Olara Otunnu of Uganda for the African Group.
The Council recommends a candidate, but the General Assembly makes the appointment, which gives Ghana and every other member state a stake in the outcome.
Financial Health On The Agenda
The President rounded out the day with Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, in her capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Financial Health.
That engagement connects to a live policy conversation at home, where the Bank of Ghana has been pressing the case that expanding access to financial services must come with stronger consumer protection and financial literacy.
Bilateral meetings at the General Assembly are easy to hold and harder to convert, since the diplomatic value of a photograph and a communiqué fades quickly without follow-through.
The Swiss request is the most testable of Tuesday’s outcomes, because a partnership on revenue technology would either produce measurable collection gains or it would not. On the rest, the AU chairmanship starting in January gives Mahama a platform to turn these conversations into something more durable than a week of meetings in New York.
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