Russia has been pushing disinformation campaigns targeting U.S. health campaigns in Africa. Egountchi Behanzin, a French Togolese activist, has been exposed in several investigations for discrediting U.S. and Western health campaigns in favor of Russia.
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MARONDERA, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwean health officials said Tuesday they aim to eliminate HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, crediting the United States with making such progress possible through aid and support.

U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Pamela Tremont and officials from PEPFAR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toured the HIV services area at Marondera Hospital, located some 70 kilometers east of Harare, the Zimbabwe capital, where HIV/AIDS once sickened thousands.

Speaking to journalists afterward, Dr. Delight Madoro, a district medical officer in Mashonaland East province, said PEPFAR — or the U.S. Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — enabled Zimbabwe to combat the epidemic with strategies such as blood-based self-testing and PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis.

“And after maybe you test positive, there are staff and support … at the facilities to help link you to other HIV services,” Madoro said.

“There is a lot that is happening on the ground in terms of [the] fight against HIV through the support that we are getting from PEPFAR,” he continued. “And in terms of human resources, we’re getting more staff. This means our clients are going to have more time with clinicians, so that we become thorough, and we get thorough with our treatment.

“So, in a nutshell, I can say the support that we have been getting from PEPFAR is of paramount importance,” he said.

Tremont said the U.S. was committed to help fight the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe.

“We’ve made huge progress since 2006,” she said. “The number of deaths from HIV has fallen 80%, and that is something I think we should all be very proud of.”

Tremont mentioned that the U.S. provided antiretroviral treatments and many health care workers at clinics and hospitals around Zimbabwe.

“It’s great to see all that in action today and to see the dedication and stubbornness of the health care workers reaching down to those HIV patients who are scared and reluctant to undertake treatment,” she said. “Thank you to the health care workers. You are our heroes in all this.”

Haddi Cham, the Centers for Disease Control’s Zimbabwe HIV services branch chief, said the PEPFAR program made the HIV facility at Marondera Hospital possible.

“We have been supporting this facility for many, many years now, and we are really grateful for the collaboration with all the key stakeholders. Through that strong collaboration, we are able to realize these results,” Cham said.

Zimbabwe is one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS, especially before 1999, when authorities introduced an AIDS levy — a 3% tax on income and business profits that is used by the National AIDS Council for programs to combat the spread of the pandemic.

Data indicate the prevalence of HIV among adults ages 15 to 49 in Zimbabwe declined from 12.7% in 2019 to 10.5% in 2023.
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A new initiative is reshaping the lives of smallholder farmers and students in Malawi. The Home-Grown School Feeding Program, championed by the U.N. World Food Program, is bridging the gap between agriculture and public primary schools, resulting in improved nutrition for students and economic empowerment for farmers. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
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In an attempt to end polarization in Zimbabwe’s media, an organization is hosting sports events for journalists from the privately owned and state-run media. Columbus Mavhunga joins the inaugural event in Harare, where he files this report.
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In the early evening of November 11, after four days at sea, the passengers of two boats carrying 75 Somali migrants spotted distant lights and a hill. They could hear the muezzin calling for the Maghreb, Muslim evening prayers. Their destination, Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean, was finally in sight.

The lead skipper confirmed what they saw and heard — they were close to shore. However, he expressed a concern. He said he feared that gangsters on the beach might attack them. He decided to stop the boats and informed the passengers they would spend the night at sea and go ashore in the morning, according to a Swahili-speaking migrant who served as the interpreter.

Little did the migrants know their journey, so close to a successful ending, was about to descend into unspeakable horror.

The skippers, who were also human traffickers, had been with the passengers since November 7, when they set off in the two boats from a mothership anchored off Kenya’s southern coast, near Mombasa.

The skippers’ role was to take Somalis on the final leg of their journey to Mayotte, the French island off the northwest coast of Madagascar that has recently become a magnet for asylum seekers hoping to reach Europe.

However, the skippers were not happy with their compensation. The smuggler told the interpreter that he had been contracted to transport 40 people, but now there were 75.  “The money I was given is not enough,” he complained, according to boat passenger Luul Osman Mohamed, who overheard the conversation. The smuggler wanted the passengers to hand over more.

Soon after, the smuggler briefly turned the boat’s engine on, revved it in the water, and then shut it off again, perhaps as a tease or a warning to the passengers. The other boat did the same.

“Sometimes they moved farther out to sea, and other times they came closer to shore,” Luul told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service.  But after two rounds of this, she said, “the engine on the other second boat broke down. Then, our engine failed too.”

That night, the migrants and the two smugglers spent the night adrift on the two boats, just off the coast.

One boat carried 37 people, mostly women and two children — a 2-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl — while the second boat carried 38 passengers.

November 12

Early the next morning, two men rendezvoused with the ships in a boat, seemingly responding to phone calls made by the smugglers. The first smuggler announced that he would leave with the men to repair his boat’s engine. He never returned.

The passengers and the second smuggler remained stranded. The two boats drifted aimlessly in the open sea under the scorching sun, with no shelter to protect them. Desperate to cool off, the passengers resorted to splashing seawater on themselves.

November 13

The waves rocked the boats back and forth, but the passengers managed to sleep peacefully. One challenge, however, was that they couldn’t communicate with the second smuggler, as he spoke a language they didn’t understand. This became a minor issue compared to what lay ahead.

The next morning, fishermen arrived and communicated with the second smuggler. Together, they managed to repair the engine on the second boat.

They agreed the boat with the working engine would tow the other one, and it seemed to work at first. As the engine roared to life, they began moving — only in the wrong direction, further out to sea. For some reason, the skipper steered toward Comoros instead of Mayotte.

They continued for three to five hours, Luul recalls, until the only working engine failed once again.

“After taking us deep into the sea, he took the navigation system with him and left on the fishing boat,” Luul said. The second skipper disappeared and never returned.

“When the smugglers were with us, we felt calm. They were with us, and whatever happened to them, we knew would happen to us,” said Anas Ibrahim Abdi, 21. Now, with both smugglers gone, the migrants were at the mercy of the sea and the elements.

November 14

The 75 migrants drifted in the ocean. They had run out of the dates, fried chicken and bread they had received from the mothership a week earlier. The boats and the migrants were stranded in no-man’s sea, not knowing where to go — or how.

Passengers tied the two boats together, to stay connected, says Luul.  But when strong waves battered the vessels, they untied the ropes, fearing that if one boat were to sink, the other would go down, too.

About six men who knew how to swim came over to the women’s boat, just in case there was an accident.

Anas, who was in the first boat, moved the other way. “My energy was low, I was sick. Because lots of people come on board, it was not balanced, so I moved to the other boat,” he says.

For three days, the passengers tried to make the boats move, without success. During these days the first death occurred — a young man who was a diabetic.

“We read Fatiha for him. He died in an evening,” Anas said.

Sometimes, the waves would bring the passengers close to land, only to drag them back to sea.  After 10 days adrift, another passenger, a woman named Fatima, passed away.

“It was hot, she was hungry. She was sitting at the front. Her brother was with her. She was shocked for about two days before she died,” Luul said.

The following day, another passenger died — the 2-year-old boy.

“We had milk for him. When we mix milk with sea water he refuses. When he sucks milk from his mother she faints, she finds it hard to breathe because she has not eaten. Later we started to mix milk with her urine… That kept him alive for two days,” says Luul.

Days later the boy’s mother died, too.

As one passenger after another died from hunger and thirst, others suffered hallucinations. Luul says her friend Fathi was one of them. “She was saying this is Lido beach, let us get off the boat, let us take Bajaj [rickshaw],” she says. “She was ripping off her clothes.”

At times, a swarm of fish hit the boats. Inventive passengers used their sarongs to catch a few, giving them some welcome nutrition.

“We were also eating green grass, salty, that was brought by the waves from the beach,” Luul said.

The only other protein came from a bird that came hovering over a body on the boat. It was caught and eaten too.

November 23

On the first boat, 17 people died, 14 of them women. Ten others died on the second boat. One boy, realizing the boat was going nowhere, jumped into the water, confident in his ability to swim. He was seen swimming away, but moments later, the waves carried him in the opposite direction. He was never seen again.

The last three days, as everyone lost energy, the boats moved swiftly, carried by strong winds. Rain gave the drifting migrants some desperately needed water, but most were losing hope of survival.

Then, after a dark night with no moon, Anas recalls, “At dawn, there was light, we saw the mountain and then a coastline.”

Madagascar. After 16 days at sea, the migrants had finally reached land. The migrants were able to guide the boats close to shore and staggered onto the beach.

Nearby fisherman shied away at first, Anas said. Then they saw the bodies in the boats.

“They were moved. They gave us water, rice and fruits,” Luul said.

The fishermen made a phone call. Another boat came. They tied their boat to the migrants’ and pulled them onto the beach.

“They were good people, they helped us, they changed our clothes, they gave us warm water to get our energy,” Luul said.

The migrants were transferred to authorities in Madagascar.

Luul, the 31-year-old mother of five, was the only person from her family on the boat. She says she survived because “everyone has their time to die” — and this wasn’t hers, although she felt it was close.

“I was thirsty, I was hungry; my voice has changed, the last day my throat was not opening, it was swollen. I had lots of spots, and from sitting on the boat. I was weak,” she said.

Out of the 75 passengers, 47 survived the grim journey. The Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the social media platform X that it chartered a plane for the survivors, including Luul and Anas, and brought them back to Mogadishu on Saturday.

This story originated in VOA’s Horn of Africa Service.
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In December, many Africans return to their ancestral homes to reconnect with their families and traditions. In South Africa, that includes traditional healers. As Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg, many are finding that a new app is helping to bring this age-old practice into the digital age.
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The Seychelles, a small island nation off the east coast of Africa, is among the countries participating in a climate change hearing taking place through December 13 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Kate Bartlett visited the main island, Mahé, to see how residents are coping with rising sea levels and a warming ocean. (Videographer: Herbert Labrosse; Contributor: Rassin Vannier)
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DAKAR, SENEGAL — For the artistic and cultural elites of Senegal, the monthlong Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Arts is a celebratory moment.

Every two years, hundreds of artists, curators and art lovers from across the world descend on the West African capital to attend the event, which was founded in 1989 by the Senegalese government and has over the decades become one of the most important showcases on the continent.

Pop-up exhibitions are held in hundreds of venues, from stylish five-star hotels to local art galleries. Roads are even more crowded than usual, with traffic jams stretching out for miles along the Corniche, the city’s picturesque seaside boulevard. Every night, there are music concerts, fashion shows, talks with artists and movie screenings held against the backdrop of palm trees and to the soundtrack of popping champagne bottles.

But it wasn’t until this year that the local artisans in the Soumbedioune crafts market, just off the Corniche and at the doorstep on the Medina working-class neighborhood, realized what the Biennale was.

For years, “we saw the OFF signs, but we didn’t know what was going on,” said Ndiouga Dia, a 48-year-old leatherworker from Soumbedioune, referring to a series of events organized in parallel to the official government program, scattered all over the city. “Only the artists knew among themselves what was going on.”

Craftsmanship is deeply rooted in the country’s culture. Senegal, like most African nations, has little capacity for industrial production, and traditionally much of its economy has relied on locally produced goods. For centuries, craftsmen played a central role in Senegalese social life, sculpting religious statues and ceremonial masks, sewing boubous (traditional colorful wide-sleeved robes), molding pottery and weaving baskets.

But these days, their role is in decline. As living costs rise, many Senegalese opt for cheaper, often Chinese products. And those that can afford it buy Western clothes and furniture to mark their social status.

So when two designers approached Dia, who is also the community leader of the Soumbedioune artisans, with a proposal for a joint exhibition, he didn’t hesitate for a second.

It felt good to be noticed and included, Dia said.

Designers Kemi Bassène and Khadim Ndiaye asked five artisans — a sculptor, a painter, a jeweler, a leatherworker and a upholsterer — to interpret the theme of “hippo.”

They chose the theme because it was easily recognizable across Africa, they said, bringing together people from different nations who live next to the water.

The exhibition, held in the central square of Soumbedioune, surrounded by artisanal boutiques and restaurants selling thieboudienne, the most famous Senegalese dish, has been a hit among locals. There are hippo earrings and a hippo necklace; a giant wooden sculpture of a sleeping hippo; and a hippo-shaped bag.

Papise Kanté, a 45-year-old sculptor who created two wooden hippo statues for the exhibition, said it allowed him to tap into a more creative part of his work, instead of just producing objects that he intended to sell.

“I have been sculpting since I was a young child,” said Kanté, who comes from a long line of sculptors. “Every artist wants to get better.”

But it also gave his work recognition.

“It’s because of the Biennale that people know my work,” he said. If you participate in the Biennale, he added, “you are proud.”

Bassène, the curator, grew up in Medina, next to Soumbedioune, but is now based in Paris. He said he wanted to bridge the divide between arts and crafts.

“This is the first time in the history that artisans, especially those who are custodians of traditional craftsmanship, are invited to the Biennale,” Bassène said. “For craftsmen in Africa, there is a natural progression towards the world of modern design.”

It was “normal,” he said, to include artisans in the Biennale “if we wanted to try to decolonize a little.”

This year’s Biennale is being held as Senegal is undergoing profound political change, with the newly elected authorities charting a more self-reliant and pan-African course.

Last month, the governing party, PASTEF, secured a resounding victory in legislative elections. Its win granted President Bassirou Diomaye Faye a clear mandate to carry out ambitious reforms promised during the campaign to improve living conditions for ordinary Senegalese — including greater economic self-reliance, revamping the fishing industry, and making maximum use of natural resources.

The theme of this year’s Biennale has been “The Wake,” alluding to the emancipation of the African continent from its remaining dependence on former colonial powers.

The new government of Senegal has “a transformational agenda,” said Bassène. “I think that what we have experienced politically will impact all the social sciences and all art.”

In the meantime, the Soumbedioune artisans have big plans. Dia, the community leader, said that they are planning a collaboration with a local school to manufacture backpacks for students.

His dream, he said, was to expand the production across the whole country so the Senegalese parents “do not have to buy Chinese products.”

“We have all the know-how,” he said. “We can produce more.”
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ACCRA, GHANA — Ghana voted in a presidential and parliamentary election Saturday amid hopes for an economic revival after the worst financial crisis in a generation that led to a major debt default in the West African nation. 

President Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping down next month after serving the two terms allowed by the constitution in Ghana, the world’s second-largest cocoa producer and a significant gold miner. 

Twelve candidates are vying to succeed him, but the race is seen as primarily between Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, chosen successor of Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), and former President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). 

Opinion polls tipped Mahama, who served as president from 2012 to 2016, for a potential comeback. 

Mahama, 66, has framed Bawumia as representing a continuation of policies that led to Ghana’s economic woes, and has promised to renegotiate terms of a $3 billion IMF bailout secured last year to restructure the country’s debts. The crisis peaked in 2022 when Ghana turned to the International Monetary Fund. 

“This is the only election that we can all see the direction of the outcome before we start voting,” Mahama said after casting his vote in Bole, his hometown in northern Ghana. 

“We are hopeful and confident that we’ll win,” he added. 

Bawumia, a 61-year-old former central banker, also expressed confidence that he would win after he voted in his Walewale constituency in northern Ghana. 

“By the grace of God, I’m very hopeful of winning this election. I think that we have done a lot of work. We have put our message to the people, I think the message has been well received,” he said. 

On the campaign trail, Bawumia has highlighted Ghana’s gradual recovery from the crisis, with economic growth surging by 6.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2024, the fastest rate in five years. He told supporters he will foster policies that will strengthen Ghana’s recovery. 

Both candidates said voting was generally calm and peaceful. 

Jubilant NDC supporters took to the streets of Accra’s historic Jamestown, chanting, banging pans and blaring horns after results from their polling stations showed the party in a comfortable lead. 

The electoral commission said over 99% of polling stations opened on time with voting materials delivered to them. 

It said later Saturday evening that turnout was massive, but it was too early to give a specific figure. 

Benjamin Bano-Bio, director of electoral services, said voting was calm though there were some pockets of violence. 

“Our verification machines were effective, and the entire process was largely peaceful, except for a few places where violence occurred, leading to the death of one person,” Bano-Bio told a news conference. 

After polls closed at 1700 GMT, election teams immediately began tallying ballots under the watch of agents from political parties before sending them to collation centers. 

Some provisional legislative results are expected late Saturday night and Sunday, while the presidential outcome is expected by Tuesday, although trends often allow an early prediction. 

Approximately 18.7 million of Ghana’s 34 million population are registered to vote. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Angola highlighted the potential of the Lobito Corridor, a 1,300-kilometer, multinational railway project intended to connect markets and jumpstart trade.

The presidential visit raised hopes but also drew skepticism from some Angolans who spoke to VOA about their daily struggles and the need for economic development.

In Luanda, the capital, Angolans told VOA why they are anxious for the benefits they think will come from the investment.

“We are suffering a lot. We’re struggling,” said Albertina Manuel, a street vendor, who expressed frustration over rising living costs. “School is very expensive; we are not able to pay our children’s tuition. It’s harder now. We never suffered like this before,” she told VOA’s Portuguese Service.

Sacamauro Eduardo, a university student, hoped for a meaningful U.S.-Africa relationship.

“I hope to see a strengthened relationship with Africa, and in particular between Angola and the U.S.,” he said. “I hope they approach the most important issues for the people, like poverty and investment in education. We don’t want them to just talk. They need to bring good benefits to the Angolan people.”

Others, like Amelia Joao, another market seller, said they hope the investment can bring down the cost of staple food products.

“Lower our prices,” and “help us produce things,” she said. “With more production in the country, the prices will lower.”

Solia Selende, another Luanda resident, said the United States should look beyond the polished image often presented to foreign leaders. “If they go deeper into the slums, what they will see will make them very sad,” he said. “There are people starving to death, not only in Luanda but in all Angolan provinces.”

The Lobito Corridor

The Lobito Corridor project is at the center of Angola’s aspirations for economic renewal.

Stretching from the Atlantic port of Lobito through the country’s central highlands and into the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, it could reshape regional trade dynamics, facilitating export of copper, cobalt, and other critical minerals from the DRC and Zambia to global markets.

Initially established during Angola’s colonial era, the rail infrastructure suffered years of neglect because of decades of civil war. However, with a $5 billion investment backed by partners including U.S. and European companies, the Lobito Corridor is being refurbished.

Anthony Carroll, senior study group member on critical minerals at the United States Institute of Peace, pointed to its geopolitical and economic significance.

“The Lobito Corridor is a bold effort to refurbish and construct a rail line,” he said.

“It will speed access to critical minerals for European and U.S. markets, which have been largely dominated by China in the last 20 years,” he said. “It will also give more value to Africans in terms of the return they’ll enjoy for enhanced infrastructure investment and development.”

Carroll also cited potential problems, including fluctuating global demand for critical minerals and competition from other infrastructure projects, such as the Chinese-funded refurbishment of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, known as TAZARA, which would carry those minerals to the Indian Ocean for shipping to Asia.

Angola’s leadership, however, said the projects can complement each other and there should not be a rivalry. Foreign Minister Tete Antonio emphasized the potential of linking the Lobito Corridor to TAZARA.

“Our ambition is to connect the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic,” he told VOA. “This is not about competition; in Africa, we see this as an opportunity for collaboration.”

Beyond minerals, the corridor could improve sectors such as agriculture, logistics, and manufacturing. Antonio mentioned discussions on expanding agricultural production for export through the railway route.

Economic integration

The corridor is a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s focus on infrastructure development in Africa under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a G7 initiative to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Frances Brown, White House director for African affairs, told VOA’s English to Africa Service the U.S. is committed to ensuring the project benefits the region.

“The Lobito Corridor is about investment, it’s about infrastructure, but it’s also about ensuring that it benefits communities more broadly,” she said.

“It’s all about sustainable economic development; it’s all about a transparent contracting process. It’s about ensuring that it boosts regional trade, that it creates quality jobs and improves lives.”

For Angola, the corridor could support exports to the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allows duty-free access to the U.S. market for certain goods produced in African countries.

Anderson Jeronimo, director of planning at Angola’s Agriculture Ministry, described the corridor as a way to improve Angola’s agricultural exports.

“Opportunities like AGOA can help us export more coffee and fruit products to the U.S.,” he said. “We need U.S. support to better understand and take full advantage of AGOA.”

Hopes and challenges

Despite the potential benefits of projects such as the Lobito Corridor, many Angolans face issues such as rising food prices, unaffordable education, and inadequate health care.

The country’s economy has been hit hard by fluctuating oil prices and its government has struggled to repay more than $17 billion in debt to China.

Luanda resident Rosalina Cativa said she sees the corridor as a lifeline for the struggling economy.

“Our country is in really bad shape,” she said. “A lot of things have to change, especially regarding food prices and education. We look at our country’s health, and it’s really, really bad. We need help.”

VOA Portuguese Service’s Coque Mukuta and Mayra Fernandes contributed to the report from Luanda, Angola. VOA English to Africa’s Peter Clottey and Philip Alexiou contributed from Washington.
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new york — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will head to South Africa on Wednesday, visiting the first African nation to chair the G20 economic bloc.

“The secretary-general will underscore that with South Africa taking the G20 helm and being the first African country to preside over the G20, there is a significant opportunity for the G20 to help advance Africa’s priorities,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday in announcing the trip.

South Africa assumed the one-year rotating presidency of the bloc on December 1. G20 members include both developing and developed countries, who together make up about 85% of the global gross domestic product, more than 75% of international trade and account for about two-thirds of the world’s population.

South Africa’s presidency follows that of two other BRICS members, India in 2023 and Brazil in 2024. South African officials have said they will focus on global solidarity, sustainable development and reducing inequality, and will continue much of Brazil’s agenda.

During his one-day visit, Guterres is scheduled to meet with President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as other South African senior officials.

“Discussions will focus on global and regional issues, but especially on South Africa’s G20 presidency next year, and its leadership on financing for development,” Dujarric said.

A senior U.N. official said that South Africa’s presidency will help highlight development challenges on the continent, especially the lack of sufficient financing for development.

Highlighting climate impacts

Guterres on Thursday will visit neighboring Lesotho, where he will meet with King Letsie III, the prime minister, and address the parliament.

The U.N. chief plans to highlight the effects of climate change in the country, which is surrounded on all sides by South Africa.

“The visit to Lesotho is symbolic as it is a small landlocked country that has suffered the dramatic impacts of climate change, which cost African economies billions of dollars each year,” his spokesperson said.

According to the U.N., Lesotho is trending toward dryer and hotter weather, which could negatively affect the nation’s water supply.

Guterres will visit the Katse Dam, which is central to the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and to water management in the broader area.
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Nairobi — Former Ghanaian President John Mahama is one of the main challengers of ruling party candidate Mahamudu Bawumia in the West African nation’s December 7 national elections.

If he wins, Mahama vows to cultivate a 24-hour business environment to bolster job creation and improve an economy recovering from a $30 billion external debt default in 2022. Bawumia, the current vice president, says despite the recent woes associated with the post-COVID pandemic and some internal pressures he too is committed to strengthening the economy.

Candidates

Since 1992, the country has been governed by either the National Democratic Congress or the New Patriotic Party, and that is not likely to change, University of Ghana senior lecturer Kwame Asah Asante told VOA.

“It’s the dominant parties; one of them is going to carry the day. … From 1992 up to 2020, the minor parties, if you put all their performance together, on average … they have not gone up to 5%. … But it’s also true … if they can hit more than 4% of their strength … they are able to push the election to a second round.”

On the streets of the capital, Accra, billboards of the various candidates in the December presidential election are everywhere, and voters’ excitement is palpable.

Some say they are tired of the two parties and have not decided yet for whom they’ll vote.

“Since 1992 to this year, we haven’t changed parties … every day it’s NPP NDC … we want [to] change to [a] different party so that we would see more improvements,” Angela Ofori, an undecided voter told VOA.

John Taden, an international political economist and an assistant professor of international studies at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, said that outside the main two political parties, there are newcomers that “appear to be exciting to the youth … [Nana] Kwame Bediako also known as Cheddar. He’s popular…but he hasn’t gained that much ground to make an impact in the outcome of the election…the best he can do this time might be to force a runoff.”

The 44-year-old Bediako who calls himself a visionary is running as an independent candidate. In addition to focusing on improving the everyday lives of Ghanaians, the vision in his manifesto includes developing “eco-friendly policies that ensure Ghana’s progress is not only economically sound but also environmentally responsible.”

Issues/economy

Ghana is the second largest cocoa producer in the world according to the United Nations Development Program, but the country defaulted on most of its $30 billion external debt in 2022 after the effects of years of borrowing were made worse by the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The grain supply disruption caused by the war in Ukraine also had its effects. It triggered a shortage of about 30 million metric tons of grain in Africa in the first year of the war alone, according to the Atlantic Council, a policy research organization based in Washington.

Asante said there are many critical issues at stake in this year’s elections, including infrastructure development, health, education, corruption, and unemployment, but many voters are zeroing in on one matter.

“The economy will play an important role because it’s a bread-and-butter issue; we’ve seen time and again that anytime you have a very difficult economy, campaigning becomes difficult for the government of the day,” he said.

A view echoed by Taden.

“In the U.S., we saw [President-elect Donald] Trump come back to power because of inflation and, in Ghana, inflation at some point was at a historic 54% over the last 18 months …but domestically, they have faced a lot of sustained protests over illegal mining, a crisis that has taken place in the south, where people without mining licenses have engaged in consistent destruction of the environment without any government oversight or restriction,” Taden said.

Illegal mining, known locally as “galamsay”, is affecting forest cover and arable land for agriculture purposes, and now poses a serious threat to the cocoa production, Asante said.

These issues have pushed some voters, such as Wisdom Gavor and Janet Bawah, to say they will not vote for the current government. Instead, they want Mahama, the former president who has made a comeback and promises a 24-hour economy.

“Currently we are using a one shift system. So, if the 24-hour economy comes, it’s going to be three shifts. For example, a hundred staff is working in one organization, so if the 24-hour economy comes, it’s going to be 300 staff,” Gavor said.

“The suffering is too much for us … today you go to buy this, the price is different. The next day, different prices. So, we want a change in the system,” Bawah told VOA.

Others say they will stick with the ruling NPP candidate and current Vice President Bawumia, giving him full credit for some of the policy changes his party brought to the country.

“One policy I am very happy about is the digitization policy. … This policy is about creating jobs online, making everything more accessible and taking it away from the traditional ways of doing things, to the modern way,” NPP voter Ivan Duke told VOA.

Taden agreed with that assessment saying “Dr. Bawumia is called Mr. Digital because he did promise to digitize the Ghanaian economy and to some extent he has delivered on a lot of those promises. He has introduced some digitization into the health sector and to government operations that have created a lot of efficiency. They have eliminated some backlogs in some government operations and some ghost names in government payrolls.”

Ghana is generally viewed as a stable democracy in a region plagued by coups. Despite some polls suggesting the results could sway one way or the other, this year’s election is expected to be highly competitive.
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