Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has bagged re-election and has secured another four-year mandate to lead the Gold Coast country. With 6.73 million votes (51.6%) the 76-year-old defeated former president John Mahama, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who got 47.4% valid ballots. On emerging victorious, President Akufo-Addo stated that “My immediate task will be to begin the process of reversing the effect Covid-19 has had on our economy and on our lives. Before the pandemic struck, Ghana in recent years was one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and, I give you my word, we will bring back that reputation.”
His main opposition, John Mahama through a lawmaker and the minority leader of parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, has rejected the results of the elections stating that the election was rigged; In his words to journalist, “in due course,” providing evidence to support vote-rigging allegations. The two parties have dominated Ghanaian politics since 1992, and many previous ballots have also been close. Candidates from ten other smaller parties ran for president, garnering a combined 1% of valid votes, according to the electoral commission’s figures.
Gold and cocoa production has dominated the country's exports for decades coupled with output from new oil fields. This has pushed the economic growth above 6% for each of the past three years. Inflation slowed to less than 10% for the first time in six years in 2018 and remained below that level until April this year. The cedi has had its most stable spell in more than a decade.
Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party campaigned on the need to consolidate the achievements of his first term, including free senior-secondary school education, and industrialization drive and the bolstering of farmers’ incomes in world’s second-largest cocoa producer. The ease with which he will push through policies will depend on parliamentary election results, which were still being counted Wednesday.
“The Ghanaian people have made it loud and clear that the two parties, NPP and NDC, must work together especially in parliament for the good of the country,” he said in the speech broadcast live by Accra-based radio Joy FM.
Investors are expecting Akufo-Addo to sort out an economy wrecked by the havoc of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has driven Ghana’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product to 71% in September, the highest in four years. Before the global health crisis, the West African economy was already under financial pressure due to the costs of cleaning up the banking sector and energy-sector liabilities.
Akufo-Addo’s NPP has said it will cut the budget deficit to 8.3% of GDP in 2021, from a shortfall forecast to reach 11.4% for 2020. The government, which was forced to abandon a fiscal rule it introduced in 2018 to cap the deficit at 5% of GDP, has said it will drop below the cap by the third year of the new presidential term.
