PREAMBLE

1. Recalling the Muscat Declaration on Global Science (January 2025), which calls for open, inclusive and well-financed science systems worldwide.
2. Guided by Agenda 2063, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024-2033) and Africa’s Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy (STISA 2024/2034).
3. Recognising that evidence-based policy and innovation are indispensable to Africa’s social transformation—spanning global health, sustainable agriculture and food systems, digital inclusion, climate action, and peace.
4. Affirming the central role of African scientists, research institutions, private sector actors, civil society and youth in achieving these goals.

We, the Ministers, Members of Parliament, Presidents of Academies, scientists, innovators, funders and partners gathered in Accra, hereby proclaim the following principles and commitments, urging the 2025 G20 Summit under the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa to integrate and advance them in global science deliberations.
PRINCIPLES

1. Scientific Freedom & Responsibility – Uphold the free, responsible and secure practice of science across all borders.
2. Equity & Inclusion – Embed gender equality, youth leadership and the participation of under-represented communities in all research and innovation (R&I) endeavours.
3. Open & Ethical Science – Promote open science norms (FAIR data, open access, transparent peer review) aligned with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
4. Evidence for Impact – Systematically translate research findings into social, economic and environmental solutions.
5. Intellectual Property & Benefit-Sharing – Safeguard equitable, transparent and context-appropriate intellectual-property regimes that reward African innovators and maximise public good through fair licensing, local manufacturing rights and community benefit-sharing.
6. Shared Prosperity – Ensure that the benefits of science and technology are locally accessible and advance pan-African integration.

COMMITMENTS

1. Deepening Collaboration

•  Establish an Africa-led Global Science Network to foster inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborations, including South-South and triangular partnerships, and digital knowledge-exchange platforms.

2. Scaling Investment

• Domestic commitment: AU Member States pledge to raise Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) to 1 % of GDP by 2030 and to ring-fence at least 30 % of national science budgets for early-career researchers.
•  Continental mechanism: Launch an African Science & Innovation Fund—building on ARISE-SD—to pool resources from governments, philanthropy, the private sector and development partners.
• Global partnership: Invite the G20 to match Africa’s investments through blended-finance instruments and concessional technology-transfer facilities.

 3. Mainstreaming Evidence in Policy

•  Create or strengthen Knowledge-to-Policy Hubs in each AU region to package, broker and monitor the uptake of research evidence in public policy, corporate practice and community action.
•  Mandate periodic Evidence Impact Audits within ministries and regional bodies to assess how research informs budgeting and legislation.

4. Reforming Research Systems

•  Adopt transparent, context-sensitive research assessment frameworks that value societal impact, indigenous knowledge and open-science practices alongside scholarly metrics.
• Incentivise reproducibility, data stewardship and multilingual dissemination to widen the reach of African scholarship.

5. Nurturing Talent and Mobility

• Expand pan-African postgraduate scholarships, protected fellowships for at-risk scientists, and joint laboratories with reciprocal visa-free mobility for researchers.
• Integrate entrepreneurship and innovation curricula into STEM training to accelerate lab-to-market pipelines.

6. Harnessing Digital Transformation

• Prioritise continental investment in AI, Machine Learning, big-data infrastructure, quantum and space technologies, ensuring ethical guidelines and capacity-building keep pace with deployment.
• Commit to closing the gender and rural digital divide by 2030.

7. Advancing Science Diplomacy

• Establish an African Science Diplomacy Forum to coordinate STI positions in multilateral processes, including the G20, COP meetings and the UN Summit of the Future.
• Promote joint scientific missions that tackle cross-border challenges—e.g., climate resilience in the Sahel, blue-economy innovation, and pandemic preparedness.

8. Driving Climate and Sustainability Action

• Endorse a dedicated African Climate Science Acceleration Programme to enhance predictive models, nature-based solutions and clean-energy innovations tailored to local contexts.

9. Celebrating Excellence in African Science & Innovation

•  AAS Awards for Scientific Excellence: Launch an annual AU–AAS prize ceremony honouring early-career researchers, women innovators, diaspora collaborators, industry–science partnerships and eminent researchers and fellows.

10. Intellectual Property & Recognition 

• Safeguard equitable, benefit-sharing IP regimes that reward African innovators, while instituting continent-wide awards and fellowships that celebrate and incentivise scientific and technological excellence.

CALL TO THE G20 (SOUTH AFRICA 2025)
We urge the G20 to:

• Embed Africa’s STI Agenda within its 2025 communiqué and action plans, recognising Africa as a vital partner in delivering global public goods.
• Co-capitalize the African Science & Innovation Fund and support technology-transfer mechanisms that respect equitable intellectual-property practices.
• Champion Open Science by aligning G20 research funding rules with the UNESCO Recommendation, ensuring barrier-free access to publicly funded research.
• Launch a G20–Africa Science Mobility Framework to streamline researcher visas, mutual recognition of qualifications and collaborative doctoral schemes.
• Establish a High-Level Taskforce on Evidence-Informed Policy to share best practices on integrating scientific evidence into decision-making.

Implementation & Follow-Up

• The African Academy of Sciences, in concert with the African Union - Africa Scientific Research and Innovation Council (AU-ASRIC) and the Government of Ghana, will convene an annual Accra Declaration Review Forum to track progress, publish indicators and share lessons learned.
• A digital Accra Dashboard will visualise commitments, funding flows, collaboration networks and evidence-uptake scores, updated bi-annually.
• A summary progress brief will be submitted to AU Summits and to successive G20 Presidencies.

Conclusion
Adopted in Accra on this Fourth day of July 2025, the Accra Declaration represents a compact among African nations and their global partners to invest boldly in science, collaborate without borders, and ensure that research evidence drives tangible social transformation across the continent. We call on governments, international organisations, the private sector and civil society to endorse and enact these commitments for the shared prosperity of Africa and the world.

Signed on behalf of the participants, 4TH July, 2025
END