John Dramani Mahama returning as Ghana president on pledge to mend economy

Accra: John Dramani Mahama, who is returning as Ghana's president eight years after losing power, achieved his political comeback on a promise to mend the West African country's economy.

His main rival conceded defeat on Sunday after partial results showed Mahama, 66, was on course to win Saturday's presidential election and that his National Democratic Congress would win a parliamentary election held the same day.

The eldest son of a wealthy rice trader turned politician, Mahama became Ghana's interim leader in 2012 after the sudden death of President John Atta Mills, under whom Mahama served as vice president.

Mahama defeated his main challenger, Akufo-Addo, in an election a few months later - the first in a series of votes that pitted the two against each other.

During his four-year term, Mahama invested heavily in infrastructure but drew criticism over prolonged power shortages, macroeconomic instability and allegations of political corruption although he was not personally tainted.

Polls before Saturday's election had forecast Mahama to win after a spiralling economic and cost-of-living crisis in cocoa, gold and oil-producing Ghana hit the popularity of Akufo-Addo's government and increased momentum for a change in leadership.

In an interview with Reuters before the election, Mahama said he would seek to renegotiate terms of a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout secured last year to restructure the country's debt.

He has also promised to ease business regulations, introduce a 24-hour triple-shift work system, enact tax reforms and invest $10 billion in modernising infrastructure.

"This election is not just another election. It's a defining moment for our nation," he told his final campaign rally, urging voters to "reset the country".

'Thank you, Ghana'

Mahama went to a private boarding school in Accra and also studied communications in the capital at the University of Ghana in the 1980s before moving to Moscow to study psychology.

He was first elected to parliament in 1996 and served as communications minister from 1998 to 2001. Atta Mills appointed him vice president in 2009.

Mahama failed to secure a second term as president in 2016, when Akufo-Addo defeated him on the back of falling gold, oil and cocoa export prices. Akufo-Addo defeated Mahama again in 2020 on a promise to restore growth.

Celebrating what he called an emphatic win in Saturday's election Mahama wrote on X: "Thank you, Ghana."

Mahama was born and raised as a Christian, like the majority of Ghanaians. He is married with five children.

An avid reader and writer, he has published columns in Ghanaian and international newspapers, including an opinion piece on the death of South Africa's first black president Nelson Mandela for the New York Times.

In 2012, he wrote a memoir in which he recalled the military coup that ousted Ghana's founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, in 1966. Mahama was seven at the time.