Ghanaians will go to the polls on Saturday to elect their next president, as the West African country grapples with its worst economic situation in decades.

Twelve candidates are vying for the presidency, as the current incumbent, Nana Akufo-Addo, reaches his two-term limit.

But the frontrunners are seen as two men from Ghana’s two dominant parties: the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Opinion polls indicate that voters are split between current vice president Mahamudu Bawumia, 61, and former one-term president John Mahama, 66, who hopes to achieve a comeback similar to that achieved by US President-elect Donald Trump.

But other issues such as high unemployment and a crisis over illegal gold mining, known locally as “galamsey” will also influence how voters cast their ballots, said Kwame Asah-Asante, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana.

Rising poverty levels

Ghanaians have been railing against environmental degradation caused by unlicensed small-scale mining, a longstanding issue that has left large swathes of land pockmarked by pits and major rivers polluted.

Over the years, illegal mining sites have proliferated despite efforts by successive governments to rein in galamsey, including military deployments by the current government to shut it down.

High inflation, youth unemployment and a steep increase in the cost of living are believed to be its main drivers amid a global surge in gold prices. According to data from the Ghana Statistical Service, more than 1.3 million people aged between 15 and 35 were unemployed as of September last year.

The country’s economy is also reeling from the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered “a rise in poverty levels since 2020,” according to the World Bank.

It added in an October report that “weak economic growth, limited government spending, and high inflation – particularly in food prices – have worsened living standards, pushing more people into poverty, and increasing the risk of food insecurity.”

In December 2022, Ghana’s inflation rate hit 54.1% year-on-year – its highest rate in more than two decades – spurring protests over alleged economic mismanagement.

In the same year, Ghana’s central bank recorded a loss of 60.8 billion cedi (more than $5 billion at the time). The country also suffered other economic shocks such as the depreciation of its currency, mounting debts, and a federal budget “weakened by high energy sector costs” amid “low public revenues,” the World Bank said last year.

“If the economy had gone well, I don’t think the opposition would have stood any chance because when it comes to the economic jargon, nobody understands it better than (current vice president and presidential candidate) Bawumia,” economist Bokpin said about the potential impact the economic hardships may have had on the ruling party’s popularity.

Bawumia, a UK-trained economist, has been the poster boy of the government’s economic policies, chairing its economic management team.

In response to criticism over his handling of the country’s struggling economy, Bawumia has absolved himself from the blame, saying in February that his role was advisory and without decision-making powers.

Bawumia has also been criticized by his rival, Mahama, for saying little about the economy during his campaigns.

“His strategy has been to dissociate himself from the economic fallouts,” Bokpin said of Bawumia.

Analyst Asah-Asante said that Bawumia’s record on the economy had become “both a blessing and a curse to him” in the run-up to the election.

His campaign spokesperson, Denis Miracles Aboagye, acknowledged there had been challenges.

The statistical service announced Wednesday that the country’s annual inflation rate had risen to 23%, the highest in six months, with just days to the election.

Aboagye said the current government had performed strongly on road infrastructure, health, education and tackling unemployment, however, adding that more than 2.3 million jobs had been created.

Bawumia’s manifesto also boasts of providing stable electricity for almost eight years after lingering power cuts that blighted Mahama’s first stint in office between 2012 and 2017.

Local studies said the power shortages – known in Ghana as “dumsor” – cost the country millions of dollars in lost revenue in that period.

“The dumsor under Mahama was so severe, it continues to bring back painful memories to those who lost their economic livelihoods,” Asah-Asante said.

A reset or upgrade?

Mahama has vowed at campaign rallies to “reset” the nation on a path “for good governance and accountability” if he wins back his job.

He touts successes in cutting unemployment rates and boosting press freedom during his time in office. If given another term, Mahama pledges to run a small but efficient government and bring down taxes within three months. He also plans to ban illegal mining and introduce a 24-hour economy to create jobs.

Bawumia promises to reduce the cost of living by “stabilizing the prices of foods produced locally” and digitalizing the country’s economy. He also plans to enforce safer mining practices, among other initiatives, if elected.

More than half of Ghana’s 34 million people are registered to vote in this year’s election and many are clamoring for change.

“I hope and pray that we should have a government that would listen to the plight of the people, a government that would have the magic wand to turn things around and make Ghana a better place for us,” Asah-Asante said.

The presidential poll will be held alongside a vote for members of parliament.

To win the presidency, a candidate must secure more than 50% of the total votes cast. If no candidate wins an absolute majority in the first round of voting, a run-off election will be held for the two highest-placing candidates.

Asah-Asante expects a closely fought election between the two frontrunners but is hopeful that power will be peacefully transferred to whoever wins, in line with Ghana’s long-standing democratic tradition.

“I’m optimistic that the people of Ghana will vote massively for democracy… and whoever loses the election would accept defeat and abide by the rules of the game and the country should be calm after election for us to continue the journey towards an endured democracy,” he said.

Five sets of ancestral remains from Australia that had been in German museum collections since the 19th century were handed back at a ceremony Thursday that a community representative described as a sad but “very joyful” moment.

The restitution is part of ongoing efforts by German museums and authorities to return human remains and cultural artifacts that were taken during colonial times.

In this case, three sets of remains that had been in Berlin since 1880 were handed over along with two other sets of remains held in the northwestern German city of Oldenburg. Four representatives of the Ugar Island community, part of the Torres Strait Islands off the northeastern tip of Australia, traveled to Berlin to honor their ancestors and accompany their remains on their journey home.

“These ancestral remains were never meant to be here,” said Hermann Parzinger, the head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s state museums.

“They’re here because, during the colonial era and beyond, Europeans presumed to make other peoples and cultures the subject, or more often object, of their research — appropriating artifacts from cultures outside Europe on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and even desecrating the burial places of those communities in the process,” he said.

Around the turn of the 20th century, he added, Berlin museums set up a network of scientists, travelers, traders and others who sent back cultural items from around the world, and “in racing to compete with the other major European museums, they all too often disregarded the humanity and dignity of the peoples they encountered.”

The restitution of the remains from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and the State Museum for Nature and Man in Oldenburg means that 162 sets of ancestral remains have now been returned to Australia from Germany, and about 1,700 from around the world, said Natasha Smith, Australia’s ambassador to Germany. She said the returns are “an extremely high priority” for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the government.

“It’s sad, but it’s a very joyful moment,” Ugar Island representative Rocky Stephen said at the ceremony honoring the ancestors. “This is a process of healing that’s going to happen when they return back to us.”

“No matter (if) it was nearly a 40-hour journey to travel here, because it’s been 144 years they have been missed back at their home,” he said.

Berlin’s museums now aim to do “everything we can to make the repatriation possible” of remains whose countries and communities of origin can be identified and want to bring them home, Parzinger said.

More broadly, governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times.

In 2022, for example, Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement paving the way for the return of hundreds of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes taken from Africa by a British colonial expedition more than 120 years ago.

Grasslands — also known as prairies, steppes, pampas or savannas — are home to 25% of the world’s population and all kinds of plants and wildlife, including elephants, rhinos and lions.

They also combat climate change by absorbing carbon from the air and storing it underground. Yet, even though they cover more than 50% of the Earth’s surface, just 12% of grasslands are protected, with conservation efforts often overlooking them.

As a result, they are suffering heavily, especially through land degradation — such as the loss of vegetation cover due to overgrazing or the loss of key species due to pollution, agriculture or invasive species — and the replacement of native species with crops.

“Almost 40% of global lands are degraded,” Meier added. “Degradation is a huge problem in grassland and savannas, affecting many of the ecosystem services that they provide to human lives and nature globally.”

Meier points at the production of food as one of the main drivers of nature loss and highlights the urgency of tackling the problems of food systems, including production and consumption. “Our hope for COP16 is really that food system transformation is included as a key driver for sustainable development,” she said. Meier is among the authors of a WWF report that outlines steps towards restoring, conserving, and sustainably managing grasslands, and urges for them to be included in global UN targets aiming to restore 30% of degraded ecosystems and 30% of terrestrial and aquatic environments by 2030.

Nature-positive food production

The path to these goals, according to Meier, is through not just restoration, but the protection and management of what is already there. “We are trying to work with farmers, with ranchers, with those that really supply our food and work on the land to support their livelihoods,” she said, “but also to ensure that they can continue providing food for us in a nature-positive way, without degrading ecosystems, without experiencing water stress, without adding too many pesticides to the landscape.”

Meier believes not enough has been done recently to include food systems in the global climate agenda. “We remain optimistic that COP16 will deliver a strong pathway towards integrated land management — meaning that land is considered not separate from the climate agenda or the biodiversity agenda, but that it is considered in an integrated way.”

Grasslands first appeared millions of years ago due to radical changes in climate and have been key to human survival for at least 10,000 years, by offering pasture for livestock and fields for crops. But they are often left out of global conversations: for example, the Cerrado savanna in Brazil is home to a third of the country’s species and 4,000 plants grow exclusively there, yet it gets a fraction of the attention of its neighbor the Amazon rainforest.

Meier hopes that grasslands and savannas will start to be considered more widely for their crucial role in carbon sequestration, water security and food security, “So that people really understand that these are not empty wastelands or just fields of grass, but that they are actually livelihoods to 2 billion people that depend on the health of this land,” she said.