National Democratic Congress (NDC) National Chairman Johnson Asiedu Nketiah has been elected the inaugural Chairman of the African Political Parties Initiative (APPI).
He accepted the position on behalf of the Initiative’s founding leadership at the African Political Parties Summit 2026 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Saturday, November 7.
“On behalf of the inaugural leadership of the African Political Parties Initiative, I accept the responsibility of serving as Chair with gratitude to the participating political parties and with great respect for the colleagues with whom I will serve,” he said.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah thanked the Africa Governance Centre for establishing APPI and bringing political parties from across the continent into a shared forum.
“The consensus has been reached, the leadership has been constituted, and our attention now turns to the work,” he said.
Political parties and future government
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said he assumed the role as NDC National Chairman, noting that the party had supported APPI from its early stages and would continue to back its work.
He said political parties needed to take a longer-term view of their responsibilities because governments could change more quickly than nations.
“Those who govern today may sit in opposition tomorrow, and those in opposition may later inherit the institutions they once criticised,” he said.
“A political party is not merely an organisation for winning elections. It is one of the places in which future government is formed. Long before a minister takes an oath, people have already learnt how power is exercised, whether evidence matters, whether competence is respected and whether institutions are taken seriously. What happens inside political parties eventually enters the state.”
He warned that the Africa political parties would govern over the next 15 years would be very different from the continent in which many current political institutions were created.
Africa’s population has passed 1.5 billion and is projected to approach 2.5 billion by 2050. Between 10 and 12 million young Africans enter the labour market annually, while only around 3 million formal jobs are created. Hundreds of millions still lack access to electricity, and Africa accounts for only about 2% of global manufacturing value added.
At the same time, artificial intelligence is reshaping production and employment, energy systems are being rebuilt, strategic minerals are becoming more important geopolitically, and countries are competing more intensely for technology, capital, industry, supply chains and skilled workers.
“African politics cannot prepare for that world with assumptions inherited from another age,” he said.
Building capability
Although Africa has a young population, substantial natural resources, expanding markets and a growing role in the global economy, Mr Asiedu Nketiah said those advantages would not automatically create power or prosperity.
“Resources alone do not create prosperity. A large market does not create industry merely because it exists. Countries become stronger when they acquire the capability to produce, to finance, to innovate, to organise and to sustain national purpose over time,” he said.
“Our minerals must support African industry. Our agricultural wealth must support processing and productive enterprise. Our markets must provide scale for African businesses. Our young people must become scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, skilled workers and institution builders.”
He said parties seeking to govern needed to understand the countries they proposed to lead, including their economies, institutions and the choices that would arise when public demands exceeded available resources.
Political parties, he added, required expertise in industry, agriculture, trade, energy, technology, public finance and government administration. They also needed policy institutions capable of preserving knowledge beyond individual leaders.
“Electoral victory gives authority. The ability to govern well has to be built before victory comes.”
Mr Asiedu Nketiah cautioned against abandoning national development whenever power changed hands.
“Development takes longer than political terms. Industrial capacity, energy systems, transport networks, universities, productive agriculture and strong public institutions are built over years,” he said.
“New governments have every right to change policies they believe have failed, but countries pay a heavy price when each political transition also disperses useful expertise, weakens functioning institutions or abandons investments that continue to serve the national interest.”
“Political maturity includes the ability to know what must change and what must be preserved. There is no virtue in wasting what works.”
APPI Agenda 2040
He said those challenges would inform the development of APPI Agenda 2040, which would be shaped by African political parties and provide a shared framework for examining the institutions, capabilities and leadership the continent would need.
“By 2040, many of the people who will occupy the highest political offices on this continent will be men and women who are already active within our parties today. Their political formation is taking place now,” he said.
“The standards we set, the knowledge we value and the responsibilities we entrust to them will influence the governments they eventually lead.”
He called for party schools, policy institutes, research organisations and systems for preserving institutional memory to play a greater role in African political life.
Women and young people, he said, must progress beyond structures focused mainly on mobilisation and take part in developing policy, allocating resources and exercising political authority.
“The continent cannot afford to leave large reserves of talent outside the rooms in which its future is decided.”
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said APPI’s leadership would work collectively with the Presidents, Chairpersons and Secretaries-General of participating parties, Regional Vice-Chairs, the Africa Governance Centre and the Secretariat as consultations on Agenda 2040 continued across the continent.
APPI would also engage political parties and political institutions outside Africa, although the continent would bring its own political experience to those discussions.
“Our political parties have led liberation movements, governed newly independent states, negotiated democratic transitions, managed conflict and reconstruction, and governed through economic crises and constitutional change. That history has produced knowledge that belongs in the global political conversation,” he said.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said Africa’s demographic, economic and strategic importance would increase as the balance of the world changed.
“The question is whether that weight will become productive power, prosperity and influence. That will depend in part on the quality of the political institutions we build now,” he said.
“By 2040, Africa will be larger, more urban, more connected and more exposed to the consequences of decisions taken elsewhere in the world. Its citizens will expect more from government, and they will have every right to do so.”
“APPI Agenda 2040 must therefore look beyond the next election and ask what kind of political institutions can carry Africa confidently into that future. The generation that will lead that Africa is already among us. Our responsibility is to ensure that when its moment comes, it inherits institutions equal to the demands it will face,” he said.
