General elections are expected to be held in Ghana on 7 December 2024 to elect the country’s president and members of Parliament.
A constitutional democracy with a strong presidency and a unicameral 275-seat parliament, Ghana’s two leading political flagbearers are fired up and pushing the limits to cover key battleground regions and communities advancing and re-echoing their policies and promises to voters.
The country’s current Vice President Mahamadu Bawumia, from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), is faced off against former President John Dramani Mahama from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who served as Ghana’s president between 2013-2017.
In 2020, presidential and parliamentary elections conducted were mostly peaceful, even though there were insulated incidents of chaos and violence that also resulted in about eight deaths.
Faced with weak economic growth, limited government spending, and high inflation – particularly in food prices – which has worsened living standards, pushed more people into poverty, and increased the risk of food insecurity, Vice President and Presidential Candidate Bawumia, an economist and former central banker, has been speaking of digital innovation policies as the key solutions to Ghana’s economic woes. Whether this will return the country’s growth to its potential rate of 5% which will, require macroeconomic stability, remains to be seen.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Ghana’s southeastern Volta region Bawumia said, “All the youth say, we need jobs. I am going to give one million youths digital skills in Ghana”. “Everybody, even if you are a school dropout, we can give you digital skills.”
For his part, Mahama who pursuing his third attempt at the country’s top job, after falling short in winning in the 2016 and 2020 elections against President Nana Akufo-Addo, says his economic policies would unlock Ghana’s economic potential by expanding economic activities outside of traditional working hours to enable businesses to grow and employ more young people.
“Despite the president and vice president claiming to have created over 2 million jobs, I ask where are these jobs and how many have reached the residents.”
At one of his campaign rallies in Ghana’s Ahafo region, Mahama and he and his team are “advocating for a 24-hour economy policy to create new job opportunities.”
Ghana’s former president and current main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party presidential candidate John Dramani Mahama, 65, gestures as he and his wife Lordina Mahama attend a political campaign launch ahead of December polls, in Tamale, Ghana
