Togolese Republic
His Excellency
Robert Komlan Edo Dussey
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration, and Togolese Abroad
26 September 2025
80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly
Togolese Republic (Togo)
Madam President of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly,
Excellencies Heads of State and Government,
Distinguished heads of delegation,
Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the President of the Council of Togo, H.E. Mr. Faure Essozimna GNASSINGBE, the Government and the people of Togo, I would like first of all to extend our warm congratulations to Ms. Annalena BAERBOCK on her election as President of this 80th session of our General Assembly.
Faced with the many challenges confronting our common organization, Madam President, I wish to assure you of my country’s full support and express my deep conviction that your leadership and relational intelligence will enable you to successfully lead the work of this session.
I also wish to pay well-deserved tribute to your predecessor, Mr. Philemon YANG, for the practical wisdom and constant availability he demonstrated in leading the work of the 79th session.
It is also particularly pleasing for me to commend the efforts of the Secretary-General, Mr. António GUTERRES, to revitalize our common institution, whose effectiveness is threatened by the return of unilateralism and the law of force to the detriment of the force of international legality.
In an international context of extreme confusion, where everything is upside down, it is not easy to be Secretary-General of the United Nations. That is why Togo gives you its full support.
Madam President,
The choice to place this session under the theme “Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights” offers us the opportunity not only to highlight the achievements of the past eight decades, but also, and above all, to reflect on the next steps to take in view of the challenges that continue to weigh on our shared vision of a peaceful, just, and prosperous world.
Madam President,
Ladies and gentlemen,
How could I speak to you about world affairs without also speaking of the remarkable performances of my country, Togo? Be reassured: Togo is doing well, Togo is even doing better.
For the benefit of our population, my country Togo has in recent years recorded significant progress, widely recognized in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The government has made the 2030 Agenda not simply a frame of reference, but truly the compass of public policies.
More than 70% of SDG targets are now integrated into national strategies, particularly through the government roadmap 2020–2025, structured around four essential pillars: social, economic, environmental, and governance.
For example:
- With regard to reforms to improve public finance management systems and the steering of public investments, the government has taken remarkable actions such as:
- Digitalization and simplification of tax and customs procedures, increasing tax revenue mobilization by the Togolese Revenue Authority.
- Operationalization of the single window for filing financial statements (GUDEF), enabling a single digitalized filing.
- Digitalization of land title issuance procedures, producing digital land titles.
- Operationalization of the Tax Policy Unit (UPF), enabling the drafting of the annual report on the evaluation of tax expenditures to be annexed to the Finance Bill.
- Consolidation of program-based budgeting reform.
- Strengthening the legal framework for public finance oversight, including the creation and operationalization of a coordination platform for oversight bodies.
- Strengthening the legal framework for public procurement with the adoption of laws on public contracts and Public-Private Partnership contracts in 2021, in order to raise the level of budgetary credit consumption allocated to investment projects.
- With regard to reforms to improve the business climate:
- Possibility of holding hearings online.
- Reduction of deadlines for judicial procedures and acts.
- Digitalization of case management and referral to the Arbitration Court of Togo.
- Digitalization of procedures for company creation, statutory modification, and declaration of beneficial owners.
- Digitalization of the issuance of building permits.
- Full digitalization of land title issuance.
These various reforms in the business climate have enabled Togo to achieve the third-best performance in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In general, the reforms undertaken by the Togolese government within the framework of the 2025 roadmap have enabled numerous achievements, including:
- 90.7% geographical accessibility to healthcare in 2023, an increase of 19.3% since 2020.
- Launch of universal health insurance with ~3 million people covered (including students under School AMU).
- 150 billion CFA invested in the health sector (ELIPSE project, SSECQU, Technology Center).
- 86% access to drinking water in 2024, an increase of 26% since 2020.
- 74.5% access to electricity, with reduced energy dependence from abroad (64% in 2020 to ~50% in 2025).
- 24.8% of the population living below the poverty line in 2025 compared to 51.1% in 2020.
- 85.7% financial inclusion with 197,916 loans granted (ranging from 30,000 to 50 million CFA francs) worth 18.32 billion CFA francs.
- Agricultural yield increases (2020–2025) of 11%, 7%, 17%, 32% respectively for maize, rice, cassava, and soybean.
- 9.8 billion CFA francs granted to finance 176,000 producers.
- 2,462,995 hectares cultivated in 2024, up 12.21% compared to 2020 (2,195,038 ha).
- 30.6 million tons of goods handled at the Autonomous Port of Lomé in 2024 against 25.9 million in 2020.
- 4,472 km of rural tracks and 485 km of paved roads built or rehabilitated across the country by end-2024.
- 1.5 million passengers welcomed at Lomé’s Gnassingbé Eyadéma International Airport in 2024.
- 10 industrial units operational following construction of the 800-hectare Adétikopé Industrial Platform (PIA).
- 346 billion CFA francs invested by projects approved under free zone or investment code regimes.
- 90% fixed and mobile internet coverage (vs 75% in 2020) and a 20-fold increase in internet network capacity thanks to the Equiano cable.
- +67.6% budget revenues, rising from 655.2 billion CFA in 2020 to 1,098.1 billion CFA in 2024.
- Recruitment of ~25,000 civil servants (health, education, etc.).
- 3.4% of newly registered vehicles in 2025 are electric (vs 0.003% in 2020).
- Digitalization of nearly 200 public services.
- Tax revenue-to-GDP ratio increase from 12.4% in 2020 to 14.4% in 2024.
- 60% of coasts protected against erosion (vs 44% in 2020) thanks to 18 km of protective works.
- 40 million trees planted on 48,000 hectares of land.
These achievements under the roadmap have accelerated Togo’s economic growth to 7% in 2025 while controlling inflation. For example, the 2024/2025 UNDP Human Development Report highlights Togo’s progress in income, schooling, and life expectancy indicators.
In the WAEMU zone, Togo is one of only two countries ranked as a “medium human development country” and occupies 2nd place in the HDI ranking of the zone. In ECOWAS, Togo occupies 4th place.
These results testify to the government’s determination to combine economic resilience, social stability, and sustainable development ambition in a global context marked by multiple challenges.
Madam President,
My country is modernizing and confidently projecting itself into the future. But these efforts are not safe from the terrorist threats weighing on the Sahel and West Africa as a whole.
Here, in this solemn place, I wish to pay heartfelt tribute to all the victims, both civilian and military, who made the supreme sacrifice in this difficult struggle.
Madam President,
Ladies and gentlemen,
This year 2025, the United Nations celebrates its eightieth anniversary — eighty years, the age of maturity and balance. We have come a long way together. But at this stage of our common journey, we must have the courage to ask ourselves the right questions, those that open the way to truly happy prospects for humanity.
We must regain control of events to direct them toward building a less violent and more just world. For this, the world cannot remain deaf to the voices resounding from everywhere, calling for change to the international order imposed eight decades ago by a small group of States with sometimes converging, sometimes diverging interests.
Ladies and gentlemen,
As you know, the African Union has chosen for the year 2025 the theme: “Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations.”
It is in the light of this ardent thirst for justice that Africa’s current struggle for reparations must be understood. Africa demands justice — and its corollary, reparation.
Africa demands justice for having been plundered and humiliated through the enslavement of its sons and daughters for more than four centuries. More than 20 million Africans were torn from their families and deported to the Americas where they were enslaved. The souls of these millions of men and women are still waiting for justice.
Africa demands justice for having been disoriented and profoundly disrupted in its historical trajectory by nearly a century of colonialism.
Africa demands justice for having paid, with its blood and resources, for the prosperity of other continents.
Africa demands justice because between 80% and 90% of its cultural heritage is today held in foreign museums.
Africa demands justice because African human remains still lie in foreign hands, outside the continent, in violation of humanity’s sacred laws.
Africa demands justice because its significant contribution to the victory over the darkness of fascism in the 20th century was neglected at the founding of the United Nations in 1945.
Africa demands justice because it has been excluded for 80 years from the world’s decision-making bodies.
Africa demands justice because the Security Council denies its peoples fair and equitable representation.
Africa demands justice because its children still suffer racism and humiliation around the world.
Africa demands justice because there exists a unique and unprecedented moral debt toward African peoples which has not yet been paid. Humanity has never been so humiliated as through the enslavement of our forebears and the colonization of Africa, the cradle of all human civilization.
Be assured: Africa is not turned toward the past. We do not invoke the memory of slavery and colonization to rekindle pain. We do so to build a future of justice and equity.
Ladies and gentlemen,
To illustrate my words, let me begin by showing you a map of the world. A map we all studied at school. It is called a planisphere; in technical terms, it is called the Mercator projection, named after a Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator. And on this map we all use, there is a big problem.
The Mercator projection, inherited from the 16th century, reduces the continent by about half while enlarging Europe and North America. Africa stretches over more than 30 million km² — three times the size of the United States. Yet on our world maps, it appears barely larger.
With an area of about 30.3 million km² (11.7 million square miles), including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth’s land surface and 6% of its total surface. With nearly 1.4 billion inhabitants in 2021, it represents around 18% of the world’s population.
Africa’s size is deliberately minimized. It looks as small as Greenland or Russia, which is false when one considers the real size of the continent and its 54 countries. Africa alone could contain the United States, Russia, India, France, Great Britain, China, etc.
This is why Togo, in support of the African Union, calls for correcting the representation of Africa on world maps, with the campaign I ask the United Nations to support: “Correct the MAP.” We must decolonize geography. We need a new political cartography of Africa.
You also understand why, at the second Africa–Caribbean summit held on 7 September in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Africa and the Caribbean reaffirmed their determination to put their fraternal, transcontinental partnership at the service of reparative justice for Africans and people of African descent, and emphasized the need to move toward “the creation of an African Union Decade for justice for Africans and people of African descent (2026–2036) through reparations.”
Here I wish to salute our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean who have grasped the meaning of this struggle: you understood that by standing together for the cause of reparations, we will advance it more effectively. This too is the essence of Pan-Africanism — a Pan-Africanism for justice and for the cause of reparations.
It was the same thirst for justice that prompted Togo to submit to the deliberative bodies of the African Union the initiative that led to the decision adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of our continental organization, on 16 February 2025, to classify slavery, deportation, and colonization as crimes against humanity and genocide against the peoples of Africa.
This decision marks a major event for Africa and peoples of African descent, for it counters the logic whereby descendants of perpetrators dictate the terms of the debate and name their crimes, rather than the rightful heirs of the peoples who suffered those crimes in their flesh.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The United Nations must not remain indifferent to reparative justice, since past crimes and injustices left unaddressed, wherever they are, fuel the crises and conflicts of our time and will feed those to come. Current crises feed on unresolved injustices of the past, because peoples remember their wounds.
Reparation of past crimes and injustices is one of the tools we need to bring peace back to the world and to relations among civilizations.
Africa, as a continent of resilience and hope, embodies this need for reparative justice. Recognition of past injustices, particularly through concrete reparative actions, is an indispensable step toward lasting peace and social cohesion.
That is why, from this very rostrum and with gravity, I wish to call upon world public opinion to face the question of reparations with courage. Today, Africa stands tall before the world and demands reparation.
Repairing past crimes is repairing History. And repairing History means removing the obstacles to greater justice and equity in the world; dismantling systems based on exploitation that still influence and structure the lives of many peoples; saving the world from forgetting and perpetuating the memory of millions; acting in the present to correct the wrongs of the past; liberating the world from discrimination and racism; escaping the “endless trap” of exclusion and denial of justice.
Among the reparations Africa expects from the world, beyond those relating to the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonization, are reparations involving a reconfiguration of global trade systems and global economic and financial reforms, debt restructuring, structural reparations for fair and equitable representation in international institutions.
Reparations are not only about material compensation. They must also take the form of sustainable investments in education, infrastructure, health, science, and technology, enabling Africa to make up for lost time and fully unleash its potential.
In the Pact for the Future resolution adopted last year by Heads of State and Government representing the peoples of the world, here in New York at the UN headquarters, we jointly underlined the urgent need to reform the Security Council to make it more representative and adapted to today’s world. We must now take action.
Security Council reform is a matter of reparation for historical prejudice against Africa and other peoples of the world. Granting permanent seats to Africa is an imperative of dignity and justice.
But this reform must go hand in hand with recognition that today’s global inequalities are rooted in historical injustices. Refusing to address them perpetuates an unfinished multilateralism.
The reform of multilateral institutions demanded by African peoples for decades — and now insisted upon more ardently in these times of global turmoil — must therefore be understood as a demand for reparations to compensate for Africa’s marginalization within multilateral institutions.
This specific aspect of reparations, as one of the essential components of the global reparations Africa is entitled to expect from the world, will be at the heart of the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé, on “Renewal of Pan-Africanism and Africa’s role in the reform of multilateral institutions: mobilizing resources and reinventing ourselves to act.”
I invite the entire African community, its partners, and all justice-loving people of goodwill to make this event a historic success.
Through reparations, we will succeed in renewing peoples’ trust in multilateral institutions, starting with the United Nations. Reparations will enable us to project ourselves together into a humanity reconciled with itself. To render justice to peoples wounded by crimes and historical injustices is to help repair the world for the greater happiness of all.
Madam President,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Africa has been left aside for the past eighty years in global governance. It is high time to repair this injustice. Rarely does History offer opportunities as favorable as those we have today to change the course of the world.
After so many historical injustices against Africa, the time has come to repair them in the perspective of an ethic of repentance and the reconstruction of a new relationality. This struggle we are waging is not only an African struggle. It is a struggle for humanity — a struggle so that never again will the injustices of the past dictate the inequalities of the present.
That is why we ask the United Nations, for its credibility, to recognize the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, slavery, and deportation as not only crimes against humanity but above all GENOCIDE against the peoples of Africa.
Genocide, Genocide,
Genocide, Genocide,
Genocide, Genocide.
I thank you.
