The current Ghanaian political scene
Here is a summary of the players on the Ghanaian political scene. There are five main parties that command the attention of the people, the first two being the majority parties:
The National Democratic Congress (NDC). This centre-left party was founded by Jerry Rawlings in 1992. Although Rawlings was elected president twice (1992-2000), the NDC remained an opposition party for many years. Represented by two presidents (first Atta Mills, then John Dramani Mahama), the party regained power in 2008 and held it until December 2016.
National Patriotic Party (NPP). This is the party currently in power and that of the strongman of the early 21st century, John Kufuor. The party is center-right and composed mainly of Ashanti businessmen, but during Kufuor's two terms in office (2000-2008) it adapted its political horizon and focused on those left behind by economic growth. The NDC won the next two terms, and then Nana Akufo-Ado won the election in 2016 and again in 2020, basing his campaign on the slowing economy.
Conventional People Party (CPP). Founded by Kwame Nkrumah, this party is a shadow of its former self. George Aggudey, the party's former leader, has fought long and hard to rekindle the faith of the youth in a communist or socialist system, to no avail.
People National Convention (PNC). Founded by a breakaway faction of the CPP, this popular party is an offshoot of the northern part of the country, with no real political representation at the national level.
Ghana Union Movement (GUM). Established in 2019, it is the youngest Ghanaian party. Christian Kwabena Andrews, at its head, presents himself as "the new Kwame Nkrumah" and has received the support of the father of the nation's daughter, Samia Nkrumah. In the 2020 elections, the party came inthird, with 0.99 per cent of the vote, butthird nonetheless.
A vibrant West African democracy
Since 1992, the end of authoritarian military rule and the transition to democracy under Jerry Rawlings, multiparty politics in Ghana seems to be going well. That same year, both the adoption of a new constitution and the elections took place in a very peaceful atmosphere. From then on, and international observers agree, Ghana's state functioning was considered stable and even an African example of pacifism and political dynamism. After Rawlings' two terms in office, there was a perfect alternation between the country's two main parties: two terms in office for the NPP (2000-2008), then two more terms in office for the NDC (2008-2016), and then two terms in office for the NPP again (2016-2024).
In his re-election in 2020, Nana Dankwa Akufo-Addo won by a narrow margin over former President John Dramani Mahama (2012-2016). Interestingly, in the December 2020 parliamentary elections, which followed the presidential elections, the number of NPP MPs equalled that of the NDC, forcing the two parties to debate and seek common solutions. The most recent issues of contention in the Ghanaian parliament have been over the passage of the 2023 budget. The main challenge for the NPP, which is now looking ahead to the 2024 elections, is naturally to win a third consecutive election. To do so, Akufo-Addo will have to overcome the crisis that Ghana has been experiencing since the early 2020s, a crisis marked by severe inflation that has been reinforced by the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine. We will come back to this later in a section dedicated to Ghana's current economic challenges.
An external mediation policy
Benefiting from the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, one of the main initiators of pan-Africanism in the 1950s, Ghana has a certain political weight within the African Union (it held the presidency in 2007). Over the past quarter century, Ghana has been militarily involved in numerous peacekeeping operations in West Africa and also in Lebanon. Already in the 1990s, Jerry Rawlings did not hesitate to support peace efforts by sending soldiers to reinforce the UN's blue helmet troops, in order to intervene in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular. Considered a mediator of primary importance in West Africa, Ghana, following the Ivorian political crisis of 2003-2004, received more than 10,000 refugees from the neighboring country on its territory. Again, in 2017-2018, Akufo-Addo's Ghana took on the role of facilitator in the Togo crisis. Then, from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2022, Ghana chaired the ECOWAS Conference of Heads of State and Government, which was plagued by coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso, calling for the restoration of civilian rule. Security problems, reinforced by the political destabilization of these countries, is one of the main issues of Ghana's foreign policy. Although the country has been spared terrorist attacks until now, it cannot ignore the expansion of terrorist groups in the Sahel from Burkina Faso.
Internationally, Ghana enjoys a positive image, reinforced by the visit of Barack Obama in 2009, the first African country visited by the U.S. president after taking office. It should be noted in passing that from January1, 2022 to December 31, 2023, Ghana will sit on the United Nations Security Council, working with other members to promote international peace and security. Finally, the stability of Ghana has not escaped the attention of French President Emmanuel Macron. In an unprecedented visit for a French President, in November 2017, he had made the case for moving beyond the old "Anglophone Africa-Francophone Africa" patterns.
Tourism in Ghana
Although tourism has not been a sector of particular interest to the Ghanaian authorities for a long time - the country has focused on cocoa and mining resources above all - some efforts in this direction have been made in recent years, both for vacation tourism and business travel. If, in comparison with Togo or Benin, Ghana's hotel stock is more than adequate, the country has also benefited from aid from international institutions to rehabilitate its historical heritage. These aids have indeed allowed the rehabilitation of castles and coastal forts (those of Elmina and Cape Coast in particular), but also the opening of museums and the development of natural parks. And these efforts have paid off! In 2015, almost 900,000 tourists visited Ghana, placing the country in5th place among the most visited countries in West Africa. The tourism industry has grown significantly over the past 15 years, unfortunately slowed down, like the rest of the world, by the Covid-19 pandemic that hit the world in 2020. 165 million in the tourism sector alone, or 0.25% of its GDP, but almost 20% of all tourism revenues in West Africa. How much room for improvement is there for tourism in Ghana? Certainly promising prospects, focused on eco-tourism (possibly luxury), active tourism (hiking, biking and surfing), but also on cultural tourism focused on the country's craft, artistic and spiritual heritage.
An economy in crisis
While Ghana's economic growth is generally dynamic, the Covid-19 epidemic has put a serious brake on it, with only 0.4% growth in 2020. The curve rises in 2021 (4.7% of GDP) and then weakens in 2022 (3.6% of GDP). And according to the IMF, the situation will not improve immediately: Ghana's growth in 2023 will be around 2.8%, according to the institution. This slowdown can be explained by a rise in the level of inflation and by a crisis in public finances, a sector that has deteriorated in the wake of the pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Inflation is affecting imported goods (especially consumer goods and fuel), on which Ghana is highly dependent. It should be noted that while inflation has always been high in Ghana (around 10% in the 2000s), it reached record highs in December 2022: +60% in the price of foodstuffs! At the same time, the level of the national currency, the Cedi, has continued to fall against the dollar in 2022, with a drop in value of over 50%. In order to redress the situation, the Ghanaian government had to ask the IMF for assistance to meet the additional expenditures, a $3 billion bailout granted in mid-December 2022. As a result, public debt reached 85% of gdP, a "high risk of debt distress" for the IMF. The Ghanaian authorities have committed to take measures to restructure the public debt as soon as possible. Unfortunately, on January 18, 2023, Ghana, just after Zambia, became the second African country since the beginning of the Covid-19 era to default on its debt.
At the time of writing (2023), no solution had been put forward by the Ghanaian authorities to overcome this default. This is a major obstacle to the development of the country, which is threatened by poverty, with more than 30% of the population officially living in poverty in the country. A figure that is not going down. One of Ghana's economic and social challenges is certainly to reduce this situation, which requires the implementation of a more appropriate policy geared towards supporting growth, public spending for the poorest, and the implementation of sustainable programs in education, health and infrastructure development.
