Mahama’s 2026 UN General Assembly speech set to be Ghana’s 25th presidential address
The Foreign Affairs Ministry says Thursday’s planned speech will mark 66 years since Kwame Nkrumah first addressed the General Debate. Its account contains a discrepancy over how many Ghanaian presidents have spoken there.
President John Dramani Mahama is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, in what Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says would be the 25th General Debate address by a Ghanaian president.
It would be Mr Mahama’s seventh such address, following speeches in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2025. The ministry’s tally records 24 presidential addresses through the Assembly’s 80th session last year.
In a social media post tracing those appearances, the ministry said Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, delivered the first on September 23 1960. Mr Mahama’s planned appearance comes 66 years later.
Former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has delivered the most addresses on the ministry’s list, with eight between 2017 and 2024. Former President John Agyekum Kufuor delivered six, as Mr Mahama has done so far.
The list also records two addresses by former President John Evans Atta Mills and one each by Nkrumah and former President Jerry John Rawlings. The six presidents named account for all 24 addresses recorded before Thursday’s planned speech.
The ministry said 38 years elapsed between Nkrumah’s 1960 address and Rawlings’ appearance on 22 September 1998. It stressed that Ghana continued to be represented at the UN during that period, including by foreign ministers Ako Adjei and Kojo Botsio and other senior officials.
Mr Mahama’s address remains scheduled; the milestone of 25 presidential speeches will be reached if he delivers it on Thursday.