John Dramani Mahama, the President-elect of Ghana, has stated that he would not back out of the $3 billion rescue plan the country has with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but he does want to examine the agreement in order to address unnecessary state expenditure and improve the energy sector.

In order to alleviate the cost-of-living issue in the West African country, Mahama, the former president who won the election on December 7 by a large majority, toldjournalists that he would also try to address inflation and currency devaluation.

Mahama had earlier stated that in 2023, he would renegotiate the IMF agreement that the departing President Nana Akufo’s administration had acquired.

“When I talk about renegotiation, I don’t mean we’re jettisoning the programme,” Mahama said.

“We’re bound by it but what we’re saying is within the programme, it should be possible to make some adjustments to suit reality.”
Ghana’s electoral commission declared Mahama, who was in office from 2012-16, winner of the presidential poll with 56.55% of the vote.

The nation coming from its greatest economic crisis in a generation, with turbulence in its crucial cocoa and gold sectors, is left to the president-elect of the world’s second-largest cocoa producer.

Inflation was cut in half and the economy resumed growing thanks to the IMF agreement, although Mahama stated that additional work was required to alleviate economic misery.

“The economic situation is dire … and I’m going to put my soul, physique and everything into it and focus on making lives better for Ghanaians,” said Mahama, whose National Democratic Congress party also won comfortably in a parliamentary vote held on Dec. 7.

He claimed that Ghana was “unpleasant for business” due to the “multiplicity of taxes” that were agreed upon as part of the IMF program.

“We also think that (the IMF) have not put enough pressure on the government to cut wasteful expenditures,” he said, adding a review would aim to reduce spending, including by the president’s office.

“If the president is asking us to tighten our belt, he must also tighten his,” he said.

Mahama said that talks will focus on “how to smoothen out the debt restructuring” currently in its last lap, and that the IMF has agreed to send an early team to undertake a periodical assessment.

To prevent prolonged power outages, he added, a new IMF agreement will also look for durable solutions to the energy issues.

“We’re going to face quite a critical situation in the energy sector. The electricity company of Ghana is the ‘sick man’ of the whole value chain and we need to quickly fix it,” Mahama said.

A Namibian judge has permitted two opposition parties in Namibia to examine electoral papers they had requested in order to contest the outcome of last month’s polls.

On November 27, Namibia’s ruling party, SWAPO, extended its 34-year control in the southern African nation by winning both the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Opposition parties, among other things, claimed that the election was faulty and perhaps void because of a multi-day voting extension.

“There were irregularities in the election. IPC seeks the information to… determine the extent of the irregularities,” the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), the largest opposition party, said in a court filing seen by Reuters.

“It also enables IPC to consider whether to launch proceedings concerning the validity of the elections,” it said.

The Landless People’s Movement, another opposition group, joined the IPC’s proposal.

Following a Friday morning hearing, Namibia’s electoral court directed the electoral commission to furnish the parties with election-related information for their review, including the total number of votes cast and counted at each polling station each day.

The commission had to deliver the statistics the next week.

Voting was postponed for up to three days in certain locations due to technological difficulties and a scarcity of ballot paper during the election.

“I am not even listening to those critics,” said President-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah in her victory address last week, dismissing claims that the election was tainted.

The election was free and fair, according to the Electoral Commission. The nation’s first female president, Nandi-Ndaitwah is scheduled to assume office in March.