Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, has won re-election.
The vote was held on Monday and Akufo-Addo, who has been President since 2017 emerged victorious with 51.5% of the nearly 13 million votes cast, according to preliminary results. Challenger, John Mahama, who served as President previously, losing to Akufo-Addo in an election in 2016, managed 47.9%. There were ten other candidates but not one of them one more than 0.5% of the vote.
A Parliamentary election was held at the same time with preliminary results showing Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party securing 137 seats in the 275-seat legislature. Mahama’s National Democratic Congress won 133 seats and an independent secured one seat. Four seats are yet to be allocated.
The election was held in a time of economic regression for Ghana. In 2015 it had to ask for an IMF bailout and although it seemed to have turned the corner, the Covid-19 pandemic struck another blow to the economy. The country suffered its first quarterly economic contraction in 40 years in 2020 as the pandemic saw reduced demand for Ghanaian exports such as oil and cocoa. The country’s economy is expected to grow by only 0.9% this year, compared to 2019, when it grew by nearly seven percent.