John Dramani Mahama was inaugurated as Ghana's new president on Tuesday, January 7, for his second term. The 66-year-old opposition leader secured a decisive victory in the December 7 presidential election, marking a remarkable political comeback in the West African nation, which is the world’s second-largest cocoa producer. ALSO READ: Kagame in Accra for President-elect John Dramani Mahama inauguration ceremony Mahama replaces Nana Akufo-Addo, who is leaving the position after serving two terms in office. Mahama first became president in 2012 following the death of John Evans Atta-Mills. He went on to win the subsequent election and served one full term. In 2016, he lost the presidency to Akufo-Addo and left office. He made an attempt to reclaim the post in 2020 but once again lost to Akufo-Addo. In the 2024 elections, his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), nominated him as their candidate once again—and this time, Mahama did not disappoint. Here are a couple of things you may need to know about Mahama: He was born on November 29, 1958 in Damongo, the then capital of the West Gonja District of the Northern Region. His father, Emmanuel Adama Mahama, a prominent rice farmer was a Member of Parliament for the West Gonja Constituency and the first Regional Commissioner of the Northern Region under Ghana’s first leader, President Kwame Nkrumah. According to his official website, Mahama spent the first years of his life with his mother, Abiba Nnaba, in Damongo, before moving to Accra to live with his father, “who imbued him with a strong passion for education.” He received his basic education at Achimota Basic School, where he began defending other children from bullies, and later moved to the Ghana Secondary School in Tamale. ALSO READ: Ghana’s ex-President Mahama wins election in historic comeback His family was a politically active one, as his father, Emmanuel Adama Mahama, served as a member of Parliament as well as a regional commissioner in Nkrumah’s government. Mahama attended primary school at the Achimota School in Accra and attended the Ghana Secondary School in Tamale. He received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1981 from the University of Ghana, Legon, where he also completed postgraduate studies in communication in 1986. He taught high-school history for a few years before pursuing a postgraduate degree in social psychology from the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow, which was awarded in 1988. After returning to Ghana, he worked in Accra as the Information, Culture, and Research Officer at the embassy of Japan until 1995. He then worked at the Ghana office of Plan International, a humanitarian and development organization, as the international relations, sponsorship, communication, and grants manager. In 1996, Mahama was elected to Parliament under the banner of the NDC; he was re-elected in 2000 and 2004. While in Parliament he held several posts, including Minister of Communications (1998–2001), before being chosen as the vice presidential candidate on the NDC ticket in 2008 with John Evans Atta Mills. Mills won the December 2008 presidential election, and he and Mahama were inaugurated on January 7, 2009. After the unexpected death of Mills on July 24, 2012, Mahama was elevated to the presidency, just months before the end of Mills’s term. The NDC selected Mahama to be their candidate in the December 7, 2012, election, in which he competed against seven other candidates. He was announced the winner, with 50.7 percent of the vote. Mahama’s first term of presidency faced challenges including falling global prices on Ghana’s primary exports as well as increasing public wage costs which negatively impacted Ghana’s economy, as did increasing debt. In 2016, he was once again the NDC’s presidential candidate in the election in which he faced Akufo-Addo and five other candidates. Mahama was defeated by Akufo-Addo, who won almost 54 percent of the vote. He conceded and stepped down at the end of his term in January 2017.
