Enduring lessons Kenya can learn from the Ghana 2024 elections

Kenya is in the throes of a long-delayed search for new commissioners at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), ahead of the 2027 General Election.

Ghana, often touted as Africa’s trailblazer in neoliberal democracy, held its own General Election in early December 2024, ushering in a new regime in January, and providing priceless lessons for Kenya’s democracy project.

In preparation for the 2027 General Election, politicians are already jostling for new parties and alliances, a whole two years before the vote! Outsiders looking at Kenya from a distance, are boggled by the peculiar Kenyan prolificacy of ‘parties’ and alliances.

Almost every electoral cycle, plutocrats craft special purpose vehicles to contest elections. In recent times, the country lacks an enduring party tradition.

After the decimation of the pre-and post-independence parties like the erstwhile ruling party KANU and its contemporaries, the political party landscape is an arena of fleeting opportunistic and transactional formations. 

In contrast, Ghana exhibits a more entrenched political party tradition, with what’s effectively a two-party system underpinning its electoral politics.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Patriotic Party (NPP) are the dominant parties, relegating the rest, including the Nkuruma’ist Convention People’s Party, CPP, to a fringe status.

This has been the case since the country returned to ‘multiparty democracy’ and civilian rule in 1992, ending the tumultuous period of military coups and rule.

With a ‘winner-takes-all’ scenario for the party that prevails in an election, coalition governance is not in the cards. Most Ghanaians pledge allegiance to either of the two parties, hardly ever-shifting loyalties.

Presidential elections are typically close, bordering on requiring a run-off to determine the winner.

General elections are held every four years in Ghana. After the NPP’s eight years in power, Ghanaians resoundingly rejected them, granting the NDC an unprecedented landslide victory in Ghana’s recent history, reflected in a presidential vote tally of 56.4 percent for the winning candidate, against the loser’s 41.7 percent, leaving a less than 3 percent vote share between the remaining candidates.

A decisive, nearly 70 percent parliamentary majority for the NDC sealed the upset and made it untenable to question the result.

The lead up to the elections was tense, nothing near the Kenyan experience, but even by Ghanaian standards, it was markedly charged.

Mostly because it became a very high stakes contest pitting a former president, the NDC’s John Mahama, and the incumbent vice president (VP), Mahamudu Bawumia of the NPP.

Mahama, who had previously lost his re-election bid to NPP's Nana Akufo-Ado in 2016, sought to reclaim the presidency. After serving two terms, Akufo-Ado endorsed his vice president, Bawumia, as the NPP's candidate for the 2024 election.

Mahama, having only served one full term as president, remained eligible to run for another term, setting the stage for a fiercely competitive race. Remarkably, both candidates hail from the North of the country. In countries where ethnicity looms large in electoral contests this would be unviable.

It’s not that ethnicity is not a factor in Ghanaian politics, but its influence is subtle.

The main parties have ethnic strongholds. For example, it is customary for the poorer and marginalised parts of Ghana to align with the NDC- in this case, generally, the North, Western and Volta regions.

The Central region, which was initially NPP leaning, swung to the NDC with the ascension of John Atta Mills, who is from the region, to the presidency in 2009 following a second-round run-off vote.

His VP, Mahama, succeeded him when he died in office in 2012. From the 2024 election, the Central region has produced Ghana’s first female VP. The Eastern and Ashanti regions tend to align with the NPP while the cosmopolitan Greater Accra region is competitive but leans towards the NDC.

The second oddity which turned out to be a tall order was the incumbent party’s billing of the contest as one to ‘break the eight’- essentially seeking to overturn Ghana’s long-standing tradition (since 1992) of voting out incumbent parties after they serve the constitutionally mandated two terms of eight years.

Early concession

Thirdly, what seemed like an inevitable post-voting and counting tension surrounding delayed tallying of results was incredibly neutered by an early concession by the incumbent VP- long before the Electoral Commission (EC) called the election, a truly unlikely scenario in Kenya.

Observers bill the forthright concession, which happened the morning after the vote, as pivotal in upholding the vote outcome and curtailing any planned ‘mischief’.

Across the country, once the polls closed and counting completed uneventfully in most places that same night, under the watchful eye of vigilant party agents and operatives, the result seemed manifest.

That the incumbent had humiliatingly lost the election. The EC eventually confirmed this verdict on the evening of December 9, two days after the votes closed. 

The outcome reflected the pervasive anger against the incumbent owing to the deplorable state of the economy evidenced in the high cost of living for many Ghanaians. Analysts cite the marked decline in quality of life over the past 8 years.

This was exacerbated by the perceived arrogance and run-away corruption of the incumbent regime. Ghanaians have no/very low tolerance for arrogance and contemptuous behaviour and demeanour.

A common refrain about the defeated incumbent was the extent to which the regime and its key operatives were deemed arrogant and out of sync with the plight of majority Ghanaians.

Much was also said of the EC and its leadership’s partiality to the incumbent and arrogance in the way they executed their duties. Ghanaians are quietly resolute and were unequivocal in their vote for change.

It helped that the NDC ran an energetic campaign dubbed “a quest to reset Ghana”.

To his credit, Mahama is a savvy communicator who used effective messaging on the campaign trail. Perhaps drawing lessons from the 2020 elections, the Opposition party, NDC, had its act together- exercising vigilance in guarding the vote and its outcome.

Among others, it ran a functional ‘parallel tally’ system and publicized results in real time. Also, a formidable, visible ground level, machine of party loyalists and supporters actively safeguarded the vote outcome in a dispersed manner across the country. Campaigning was similarly anchored and dispersed.  

Anti-violence

Finally, much must be said about how Ghanaians generally shun and frown upon violence in elections.

The hue and cry over the deaths of eight Ghanaians during the 2020 elections -some understood to have been perpetrated by regime operatives in the military - and the undertaking by the new regime to get accountability for those deaths indicates an uplifting quest for zero tolerance to electoral violence and upholding the sanctity of life.

For Kenya, these lessons are a clarion call to strengthen institutions, foster enduring political traditions, and prioritize the will of the people over partisan interests. By embracing these principles, Kenya can chart a path toward a more stable, credible, and peaceful democratic future.

Atieno Ndomo is a Social Policy Analyst with a keen interest in political economy