Atta Mills to be sworn in as Ghana president

Jan 7, 2009, 6:49 GMT

Nairobi/Accra - Opposition candidate John Atta Mills is to be sworn in as the president of Ghana on Wednesday after winning a tight run-off election.

Atta Mills, representing the National Democratic Congress (NDC), on Saturday took the presidency by a margin of under 0.5 per cent from Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

While the election was tainted by allegations of fraud from both parties, the electoral commission said it had found no evidence to support the claims and international observers said that elections were free and fair.

However, Akufo-Addo is considering going to the courts to challenge the result.

The transition is the second successive peaceful handover of power in a West African nation once prone to coups, and is seen as a vital boost to African democracy after electoral chaos in Kenya and Zimbabwe and coups in Mauritania and Guinea last year.

Ghana underwent coups in the 1970s and 1980s, but coup leader Jerry Rawlings organized elections and went on to win two terms.

Rawlings then handed over power to outgoing president John Kufuor in 2000 when his party's candidate - Atta Mills in his first attempt at the presidency - lost.

Atta Mills in 2004 once more failed to wrest power from Kufuor.

The new president, a 64-year-old law professor, will be charged with continuing Ghana's economic growth of around 6 per cent each year and also leading the nation into the oil era.

Ghana's National Petroleum Corporation expects 120,000 barrels per day to come onstream in 2010, with that figure rising to 250,000 barrels a day within two years.

Ghana is the second-largest cocoa grower in the world after Ivory Coast and Africa's second-biggest gold producer after South Africa.

However, there is still widespread poverty among ordinary Ghanaians.

Atta Mills has promised to tackle this poverty and address rising food and fuel prices.