Paulo Gomes, co-chair of Afrochampions and Francis Gtare, president of ASG after signing an agreement on the sidelines of CEO's Africa forum in Kigali /HANDOUT
A coalition of global leaders pushing for stronger African representation in global affairs has formally launched the Sankoree Institute of Global Negotiators (SIGN), a new programme aimed at training and certifying Africa’s sovereign negotiators.
The agreement was signed during the CEO’s Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, under the broader Accra Reset sovereignty agenda.
The institute seeks to build Africa’s first structured, practice-oriented credentialing programme for public officials, technical advisers and sector experts who negotiate high-stakes deals involving multinational corporations, foreign governments and international lenders.
These negotiations often involve hundreds of billions of dollars in areas such as sovereign debt, mining concessions, trade agreements, infrastructure projects, climate finance, and technology partnerships.
SIGN’s founders say the initiative is designed to strengthen Africa’s bargaining power by equipping negotiators with practical skills, institutional support, and modern intelligence tools needed to secure fairer outcomes for the continent.
The programme will combine African intellectual traditions, historical negotiation case studies and AI-powered analysis tools to prepare professionals for complex global negotiations.
Supporters of the initiative argue that African countries have historically entered major negotiations at a disadvantage due to fragmented expertise, weak institutional memory and limited access to sophisticated advisory tools often available to wealthier nations and global corporations.
By formalising training and certification, SIGN aims to create a new generation of African negotiators capable of protecting national interests while advancing economic transformation across the continent.
The agreement was signed by Paulo Gomes, Co-Chair of AfroChampions, and Francis Gatare, President of ASG.
The initiative has backing from several prominent African leaders, including John Dramani Mahama, former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Headquartered at ASG’s Kigali campus, SIGN will offer hands-on training through “Deal Labs” built around real-world negotiation scenarios.
Participants will also use the OCTagon Suite, an AI-enabled platform designed to provide real-time precedent analysis, scenario modelling, and access to a sovereign negotiation case library.
Graduates will earn Associate and Fellow designations, which will be renewed every three years, creating a continent-wide network of certified negotiators bound by shared professional standards and confidential intelligence-sharing systems.
