Africa Perry World House Q&A: Ghana's Elections

On Saturday, December 7, Ghanaians will head to the polls to elect their next president. Perry World House sat down with PWH Visiting Fellow and Afrobarometer CEO Joseph Asunka to learn more about the candidates, their positions, the issues on the mind of Ghanaians, and possible election outcomes.

On Saturday, Ghana will elect its next president. Who are the candidates, and what are their key positions?

Two political parties have dominated Ghanaian politics since the return to constitutional democracy in 1992: the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their main opposition, the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The NPP candidate is Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the current Ghanaian vice president, and the NDC candidate is Mr. John Dramani Mahama, who lost the 2016 elections to the NPP after one term.

There are several other presidential candidates on the ballot, including a former Trade Minister, Mr. Alan Kyerematen, who resigned from the NPP and went independent after losing the party primaries to Dr. Bawumia. Observers believe that he will draw some of the ruling party supporters, especially in their stronghold region, the Ashanti region, and potentially diminish the chances of the NPP candidate. Nana Kwame Bediako, a businessman with no political experience is another candidate who has gained popularity among some young voters due to his social media presence.

The opposition NDC party/candidate has outlined several key policy priorities going into the elections. Some of the most frequently cited messages include:

• Fixing Ghana’s struggling economy and creating job—the NDC candidate has positioned himself as the candidate that can fix Ghana’s economic crises. The campaign has pointed to rapid depreciation of the Ghanaian currency, the Cedi as evidence of poor economic management.
• Undertaking educational and social reforms to improve basic services including healthcare and the quality of secondary education—with a focus on abolishing the “double-track” system of the Free Senior High School—and reform the educational scholarship scheme to eliminate corruption and promote merit and fairness in the allocation of resources under the scheme.
• Promote anticorruption and accountability—the NDC candidate has promised to bar public officials and their family members from acquiring state assets, an issue that has dominated public discourse under the current administration.
• To promote transparent and inclusive governance and foster equitable development: the NDC candidate has promised to address the abuse of public lands and forest reserves, an issue that has also dominated public discourse under this administration.

The key messages of the ruling NPP are quite similar with a few notable differences. Some of the top policy issues and campaign promises of the NPP candidate include:

• economic stabilization and growth – the candidate/party promises to stabilize and rebuild the Ghanaian economy, pointing to external factors (the COVID19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and global economic shocks) that derailed his government’s economic programs.
• digital transformation—the NPP candidate and current vice president has positioned himself as a champion for digital transformation and this has become a central and distinguishing message from the opposition NDC. He is promising to digitize much of government operations to enhance efficiency.
• social interventions—the NPP candidate also promises to increase and target investments in the social sectors to improve healthcare and education and create jobs
• energy and infrastructure development—to enhance energy reliability and improve infrastructure to support industrial and economic activity.

In terms of policy substance, the two parties are not significantly different from each other. But traditionally, the NPP has been known to be pro-free market policies while the NDC is associated with social development policies. In practice, however, there is often hardly any visible difference.

What are the biggest issues facing Ghanaians at this time?

The latest Afrobarometer survey in Ghana show that unemployment is the top policy issue that Ghanaians want their government to address. More than four in ten Ghanaians (41 percent) rank unemployment as the top policy priority. This is followed closely by infrastructure/roads (38 percent) and healthcare (33 percent). With their promises to invest in the social sectors and create jobs, the two main political parties seem to align well with the aspirations of Ghanaians.

The other issue on the minds of Ghanaians is the negative effects of small-scale mining, widely known as “galamsey,” which has dominated the news in the last year. As several river and freshwater bodies became contaminated by the activities of illegal miners, affected communities and the public called out the president for failing to address the issue after promising to do so as part of his campaign. The incumbent president is on record as saying that he was ready to put his presidency on the line to address illegal mining. Many believe he’s failed woefully on this promise.

But Ghanaians have other deep concerns about the prevailing political and economic conditions according to the latest Afrobarometer survey.

On the political front: trust in public institutions is at a historic low in Ghana. Trust in the current president when he assumed power in 2017 was at 71 percent. Eight years down the line (i.e. in 2024), trust in the president has dropped to only 28 percent, a whooping 43 percentage-point decline. Trust in Parliament, the Judiciary, and the Electoral Commission have all declined over time. The military remains the only public institution with a majority trust rating.

Additionally, nearly three-quarters of Ghanaians (74 percent) believe that the level of corruption has increased “somewhat” or “a lot” over the past year. When the current administration took power in 2017, only 36 percent of Ghanaians held this view. In other words, the proportion of Ghanaians who believe that corruption has increased over the past year has more than doubled in the eight-year period of the incumbent NPP administration.

On the economic front: when asked about the general direction of the country, a large majority of Ghanaians (82 percent) said the country is heading in the wrong direction, according to the latest Afrobarometer survey. Eight years ago, when the current administration took office, only 47 percent of Ghanaians held this view, a marked 35 percentage-point increase. And nearly eight in ten Ghanaians (78 percent) say that the prevailing economic conditions are “fairly bad” or “very bad.” And when asked to rate government performance on economic issues, the picture is also very bleak. Less than two in ten Ghanian give positive rating for government performance on a variety of economic issues – managing the economy, creating jobs, controlling inflation, and improving living standards of the poor. On all these issues, large majorities of Ghanaians give the incumbent government failing marks on its performance.

The good news is that Ghanaians remain largely committed to elections and view them as the best mechanism for choosing leaders. A large majority (81 percent) support elections as a mechanism choosing leaders and close to seven in ten (69 percent) support multiparty competition. Looking back at the last national elections, 77 percent of Ghanaians reported that they voted in those elections. Turnout is likely to be similarly high in these elections. And six in ten (60 percent) rated the last elections as free and fair. Moreover, most Ghanaians (83 percent) believe that their ballot is secret, and a similar proportion (85 percent) said they did not feel any fear or intimidation during the last elections. In effect, the electoral environment, judging by the experiences of Ghanaians during the last elections, is very conducive.

How do the issues and democratic trends in Ghana compare with other countries who have held elections in West Africa and beyond?

Democratic trends across the continent have largely been similar across other countries that held elections in 2024. Most notable were the elections in Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, and Mauritius, countries that are largely viewed as leading examples of democratic governance on the continent. In all these countries, majority of citizens expressed dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in their countries, similar to the sentiment in Ghana. Popular satisfaction with democracy was particularly low in Botswana, Mauritius, and South Africa. Specifically, satisfaction with democracy in all three countries declined by double digits over the last decade and it was probably not surprising that the ruling parties in Botswana and Mauritius lost the 2024 elections. In the case of Botswana, this was an historic loss as the ruling party had been in power since independence. The ruling party in South Africa also lost its majority in parliament and had to enter a coalition government arrangement with opposition parties.

The story is very similar in Ghana. Popular satisfaction with the way democracy works in Ghana also declined in the double digits over the last decade. When the current administration won the presidency in 2017, nearly eight in ten Ghanaians (78 percent) said they were satisfied with the way democracy works in the country. In 2024, less than half (49 percent) held this view, representing a 29 percentage-point decline,

The electoral outcomes in the three countries that came before Ghana seem to suggest that trends in popular satisfaction with democracy is a good predictor of election outcomes; a large drop in popular satisfaction is associated with incumbent party loss. Will Ghana follow this trajectory? Not improbable.

What is the likely outcome of the election? Who do you expect to win?

Afrobarometer did not conduct a pre-election survey in Ghana and so I do not have the right data to provide a direct or adequate response to this question. That said, if the economy is the metric on which voters judge incumbent leaders and cast their ballots as it is often cited in almost all elections globally, then the largely negative views about the economy and related governance issues recorded by the Afrobarometer in the latest survey in Ghana will suggest that the ruling NPP candidate will struggle to retain power. Given the widespread public concern about the economy, couple with the large decline in popular satisfaction with the way democracy works in the country, it may not be too much of a stretch to think that the 2024 elections in Ghana are the opposition NDC’s to lose. Of course, there are many other factors that could enter the calculations that voters make before casting their ballots and we may have to wait for the final vote to be counted.

Do you expect to see major changes to current Ghanaian policy based on who wins on Saturday?

As noted earlier, the policy positions of the two leading candidates/parties are not significantly different and so I do not expect to see any drastic policy shifts. If anything, we will likely see gradual shifts in some of the prevailing, unpopular policies such as the electronic transaction levy, which most Ghanaians, according to the latest Afrobarometer survey, say should be scrapped.

That said, if the incumbent NPP candidate wins, he may try to roll back some of the policies that his party implemented as a way of signaling to the public that he’s different from his predecessor. On the other hand, if the opposition NDC candidate wins, he will almost certainly undo some of the unpopular policies of the current administration.

Joseph Asunka is a Perry World House Visiting Fellow, and has served as CEO of Afrobarometer since April 2021.