Ghana: New President Promises 200 Factories

Opposition candidate and human rights lawyer, Nana Akufo-Addo, was sworn in over the weekend.

Ghana on Saturday, January 7, 2017, consolidated its democracy with the third handover of power in 15 years by one political party to another. Akufo-Addo, 72, a human rights lawyer and candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP, was inaugurated as Head of State after winning the December 7, 2016 presidential vote. He beat President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress, NDC.

The BBC reported that the ceremony at the Independence Square in the capital, Accra, was witnessed by about 600,000 people, including dozens of African leaders. The new President promised to construct a factory in each of the country’s 200 districts and free high school education. Akufo-Addo said after the smooth handover of power in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent, leaders wanting to stay in office at all cost were “fighting the tide of history.”

Akufo-Addo vowed to put Ghana “back on the path of progress and prosperity” after an economic slump under Mahama that led to an International Monetary Fund bailout. Mahama last week defended his record, saying his government was up against “strong headwinds” that caused growth to slow, public sector debt to rise and the Cedi currency to fall. On December 31, 2016, President Mahama encouraged Ghanaians to support his successor.

Akufo-Addo campaigned for return to multi-party democracy under military rule. A former Justice and Foreign Minister in the NPP government from 2001 to 2007, he ran for President last December for the third time. Ghana has been a multi-party democracy since the end of military rule in 1992. It has since seen the change of power amongst five Heads of State – Jerry John Rawlings, John Agyekum Kufuor, John Evans Atta Mills, John Dramani Mahama and now Nana Akudo-Affo.

Opposition candidate and human rights lawyer, Nana Akufo-Addo, was sworn in over the weekend.

Ghana on Saturday, January 7, 2017, consolidated its democracy with the third handover of power in 15 years by one political party to another. Akufo-Addo, 72, a human rights lawyer and candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP, was inaugurated as Head of State after winning the December 7, 2016 presidential vote. He beat President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress, NDC.

The BBC reported that the ceremony at the Independence Square in the capital, Accra, was witnessed by about 600,000 people, including dozens of African leaders. Th...

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