John Mahama has taken the oath of office as Ghana’s new president in a ceremony attended by world leaders.
Mahama was sworn in at Black Star Square in Accra, the Ghanaian capital on Tuesday.
The new president took over from Nana Akufo-Ado who succeeded him in 2017. Before Mahama’s swearing-in, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang was inaugurated as the country’s first female vice president.
The Chief Justice of Ghana Gertrude Torkornoo administered the oath of office at the event.
“Today should mark the opportunity to reset our country,” the 66-year-old new president, wearing the West African country’s national dress, told a jubilant crowd decked in the green, red, black, and white hues of his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party.
Energy radiated from Accra’s Black Star Square, as a sea of elate faces waved Ghanaian and NDC flags, chanted, and broke into spontaneous dance to the beat of drums and the blaring honk of vuvuzelas.
Among those present were Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traore, Kenyan President William Ruto, President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon’s Brice Oligui Nguema.
Presidents Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone and Mamadi Doumbouya of Guinea as well as former leaders and officials also attended the inauguration.
The duo won the election held in December with Mahama returning to the post he left seven years ago with a mission to revive Ghana’s ailing economy.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate polled 50 per cent of the votes to beat the then-vice president Mahamudu Bawumia of the ruling party.
He scored 6.3 million votes to beat Bawumia with a 1.7 million vote margin. Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had immediately conceded defeat in the election.
“The people of Ghana have spoken, the people have voted for change at this time and we respect it with all humility,” he said in a press conference.
On his X account, Mahama confirmed he had received Bawumia’s congratulatory call.
Mahama had ruled Ghana between 2012 and early 2017. He had previously failed twice to win back the presidency but in December’s election managed to tap into expectations of change among Ghanaians.
The economy became a major election issue after Ghana defaulted on its debt and entered into a $3-billion deal with the IMF.
Ghana has only just begun recovering from its worst economic downturn in years, with inflation peaking at 50 percent in late 2022 — although it has since fallen to 23 percent.
With a history of political stability, Ghana’s two main parties, the ruling NPP and the NDC, have alternated in power equally since the return to multi-party democracy in 1992.
The country of 33 million people is Africa’s top gold exporter and the world’s second cocoa producer.
