Ghana elected its new leader, former vice president John Mahama, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. Mahama beat out sitting Vice President Mahamadu Bawumia to become the first ever two-term Ghanaian president to serve non-consecutively.
Mahama has promised to reform Ghana’s government, but what about the crisis that kept him out of Jubilee House — Ghana’s presidential palace — on his first try?
His presidency, from 2012 to 2016, featured high budget deficits, rolling blackouts nicknamed “dumsor” and rising public debt. Public sentiment eventually turned against Mahama and the National Democratic Congress party (NDC), and he was voted out.
This time, Mahama promises to improve the day-to-day economic conditions for citizens embroiled in a cost of living crisis. He is set to take office Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Cost-of-living crisis
Ghana’s inflation rate peaked at 54.1% in December 2022, after reaching a low of 7.5% in May 2021.
Nana Akufo-Addoh’s outgoing government placed blame on the COVID-19 pandemic which put significant strain on Ghana’s finances. Akufo-Addoh and the NPP wrestled Ghana’s inflation rate down from 17% during Mahama’s first presidency, until expenditures related to the pandemic ballooned.
His National Progress Party (NPP) government levied several unpopular taxes on its citizens to recover the losses, though returns did not meet expectations. These include the Covid, mobile money transactions, energy sector clean-up and the “Growth and Sustainability” levies — all small but impactful hits to Ghanaian wallets.
After an International Monetary Fund bailout and some debt restructuring, the inflation rate was down to 23% in November 2024 compared to the previous year. Food inflation sat at 25.9% year-over-year, with prices for locally produced goods around the same at 25.4%, and inflation for housing, water, electricity and gas at 29.2%. These are all still extremely uncomfortable numbers for Ghanaian citizens.
In an interview with DW, Mahama promised to improve government efficiency, reduce waste as a result of corruption and instate a new standard of accountability in governance. This is nothing Ghanaians have not heard before.
Mahama’s promise of a 24-hour economy, more hours, more money, more investment, more growth, more exports and more jobs is now endemic to the Ghanaian political cycle. Candidates overpromise, overspend and underdeliver.
Joyous crowds cheered the leader of the National Democratic party, Asiedu Nketia, nicknamed “General Mosquito,” as he paraded the streets of Accra following the victory. Their sentiment was less blind belief that the NDC had come to save Ghana and more so the NPPs eight-year turn at stemming the tide of a struggling economy was over.
The so-called coup belt, also known as the Sahel
The Sahel region of Sub-Saharan West Africa has been nursing violent uprisings over the past few years in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The coup nations are threatening to leave ECOWAS, a trade agreement formerly headed by Ghana’s President-elect Mahama. They have accused the trade bloc of enforcing “inhumane and irresponsible sanctions” and of being subservient to former colonial ruler France.
The coup nations have distanced themselves from ECOWAS and its traditional allies in the U.S., France and even the United Nations, and are aligning themselves with Moscow. In the summer of 2024 the three nations agreed to a mutual defense pact and purchased several surveillance satellites from Russia.
Hope for incorporating the coup belt into ECOWAS is fading, as nations in the trade agreement suffer failing economies of their own. While inflation in West Africa as a whole has fallen to around 8%, ECOWAS nations are experiencing an average inflation rate of around 20%.
The struggling economies of the remaining ECOWAS nations take away some of the leverage they have over the three coup nations.
Watchdogs and crooks
Ghanaian elections have been largely peaceful through its 60 or so years of democratic existence. Small skirmishes are common, and parties deploy their own watchdogs and hall monitors to ensure shenanigans are kept to a minimum.
In the parliamentary district Okaikwei Central, an NPP stronghold since 2013, my friend Sebastian got a gig as one of these hall monitors. I spoke to him briefly about the experience. Like many voters in his age bracket, he is largely unimpressed by Mahama’s plans to “reset” Ghana. “They’re all crooks,” was his line.
At what was supposed to be a two week training camp, Sebastian was able to secure his spot, acquire a notebook to record election day happenings and a name tag in just three days. When I asked him how he did it, he just repeated “they’re all crooks”.
Call time for the watchdogs was 5 a.m. on election day, but he had some early morning farm work to do and was late. He says no one noticed. He even had the time to check his name in at another polling station for double pay, earning a total of 600 cedis for the day.
He says the day went by uneventfully at his polling location, a private school called Unto Others. Sebastian said he met another volunteer, Kenneth, who was “killing himself for the party.”
“Those kinds of people, they give them work and they want to be bosses,” he explained.
Despite Kenneth’s best efforts, Sebastian made it home at a reasonable hour after collecting his payment through an instant mobile money deposit. He didn’t believe the party would pay him if he waited for the cash option, especially if they were to lose the election.
Affected states in the coup belt generally share a few characteristics: a slow post-pandemic recovery exacerbated by climate change shocks, food insecurity, political instability, stagnating economies and high interest rates.
The major difference between Ghana and the coup belt countries surrounding it seems to be belief in the political system. Ghana still has high voter turnout, even though loyalty to and belief in parties themselves seems to be fading.
“Ghana is a glass house and we’re all throwing stones,” a Daily Graphic headline reads.
Could Ghana become another notch in the coup belt?
In a public address, head of the Electoral Commission (EC) Jean Mensa listed several violent flare-ups around the nation during the election. In Okaikwei Central constituency, winners in the parliamentary election were declared without “due process being followed”.
Both Patrick Boamah and Abdulai Abu Sadiq posted graphics on their official social media accounts claiming victory.
In her address, Mensa expressed disappointment at photos of Electoral Commission staff being threatened at polling stations.
The worst election day flare up occurred in Techiman South constituency, where an EC officer was forced to declare victory for a National Democratic Congress candidate at gunpoint.
Another EC officer, Deryl Joseph in Bono East, was arrested for altering ballots to omit NPP candidate Mahamadu Bawumia.
The EC called for a recount as a result, but the prevailing public opinion is their attempts to correct the irregularities are efforts at tipping the scale in favor of the NPP. All in all, this an unacceptable state of affairs for a nation that has experienced decades of peaceful transitions of power.
Featured image: Melissa Bunni Elian via Flickr CC BY 2.0
Edited by James Sutton
