Ghana: Nana Akufo-Addo, president at all costs
Nana Akufo-Addo narrowly won the presidential election on Monday, December 7 against her lifelong rival, John Mahama.
CRISTINA ALDEHUELA AFP
Text by: Marine Jeannin Follow
6 min
Outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo, a former human rights lawyer who became a head of state renowned for his diplomacy, narrowly won the presidential election on Monday, December 7 against his lifelong rival, John Mahama.
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From our correspondent in Accra,
The man has a gracious face, still wearing little round Harry Potter glasses.
He does not wear his age: he who is 76 years old today will therefore be in his eighties at the end of this second term.
Outside the borders of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo is known as the champion of “
Ghana Beyond Aid
”, “
Ghana beyond Aid
”.
He is one of the first leaders to have chosen to deliberately deprive himself of aid from the IMF and foreign countries in order to boost his country's growth on his own.
In a highly publicized historic speech in 2018,
during Emmanuel Macron's visit to Accra,
he asked Africans to “
get rid of this mentality of dependence, this mentality that makes us wonder what France can do for us.
"
Under his leadership, Ghana has regained a prominent place on the regional scene.
Nana Akufo-Addo has notably led major mediation missions in Guinea and Togo, neighboring countries troubled by serious political and social crises.
In 2019, he also loudly launched
a campaign called “
Year of Return,
”
the Year of Return, encouraging Afro-descendants from all over the world, and more particularly from the United States, to “come back” to Ghana to visit its beaches, its natural parks, and the sad monuments of triangular commerce.
Human rights lawyer, defender of democracy
The septuagenarian has something to keep.
His father, Edward Akufo-Addo, was himself president in the late 1960s, and, like Kwame Nkrumah, was part of the “Big Six”, the fathers of independence and of the Ghanaian nation.
Born in 1944 in the capital, Nana Akufo-Addo therefore grew up in a family of the national elite and immersed in politics from his early childhood, her house regularly hosting her father's party meetings.
After studying in London, where he acquired and cultivated his British accent, Nana Akufo-Addo became a lawyer specializing in human rights, a profession he practiced between France and England.
He denounced from London
the excesses of the military regime of Kwame Nkrumah
, then returned to Ghana with the advent of democracy, in 1992. Nana Akufo-Addo then joined the liberal opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (New Patriotic Party, NPP).
In the early 2000s, he entered the government as Minister of Justice, then Foreign Affairs for John Kufuor.
He successively loses the 2007 election against John Atta Mills, then that of 2012 against John Mahama, before obtaining his revenge on this same opponent in 2016.
"
Economic revolution
" and the fight against corruption, a mixed record
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Nana Akufo-Addo won over the electorate with two promises: to undertake an "
economic revolution
" to revive growth in Ghana, at half mast at the end of John Mahama's term, and to put an end to corruption , he who is renowned for flawless integrity.
The first bet is, for the most part, a success, at least during the first three years of his mandate.
Thanks to austerity policy, Nana Akufo-Addo manages to halve the state budget deficit.
It undertakes to liberalize the economy of Ghana, in particular by reducing employers' charges, and invests in infrastructure and hydrocarbons.
The president is also relaunching the industrial sector,
around the much-publicized “One District, One Factory” initiative.
And within months, Ghana becomes one of the 10 fastest growing countries in the world.
To finance this stimulus program, and compensate for the end of IMF aid, Nana Akufo-Addo adopts a massive debt strategy.
Ghana's public debt,
worsened this year by the Covid-19 crisis,
now represents more than 70% of its GDP.
Growth fell to less than 1%, its lowest rate in 37 years.
Multiple challenges for this second term
If her economic record is mixed, Nana Akufo-Addo was especially praised during this first term for her social measures, in particular the establishment of free high school for all Ghanaians.
But also for its good management of the health crisis, the drastic measures adopted in March having made it possible to limit deaths due to Covid-19 to 326 deaths.
But in the space of four years, the image of the white knight in the fight against corruption has considerably tarnished.
Nana Akufo-Addo's presidency has been marred
by numerous scandals of corruption and nepotism
, with her government comprising several members of her family.
The latest scandal erupted during the presidential campaign last November with the resounding resignation of anti-corruption prosecutor Martin Amidu.
He then accused Nana Akufo-Addo of obstruction in his work, which the presidency formally denied.
Aware of these weaknesses and the difficulties that Ghana faces today, Nana Akufo-Addo refrained during this campaign of flamboyant promises, as he did in 2016. Her most urgent task should be to limit the galloping inflation and increasing public debt, solve the problem of youth unemployment, and regain the confidence of Ghanaians.
According to a 2019 Afrobarometer study, more than half of those polled felt that it had failed to significantly improve their standard of living.
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