Ghana profile

President: Nana Akufo-Addo

President Akufo-Addo pledges to tackle unemployment

Veteran human-rights lawyer and presidential hopeful Nana Akufo-Addo won the presidency at the third attempt in December 2016, beating the incumbent John Mahama in a campaign dominated by Ghana's faltering economy.

Mr Akufo-Addo comes from an eminent political family. His father Edward, a leading independence campaigner, became president in 1970-72, and one grandfather was a regional king who served on the British colonial authority's Executive Council.Mr Akufo-Addo was called to both the English and Ghanaian bars, but focused in the 1980s on opposing military rule, and later campaigned against the free-market reforms of President Jerry Rawlings. He served as attorney-general and then foreign minister during the civilian presidency of John Kufuor in the 2000s, and stood for the presidency himself in 2008 and 2012 as candidate of the New Patriotic Party. He challenged the result of the 2012 election, taking it as far as the Supreme Court, which ruled narrowly in favour of President John Mahama.In the 2016 election Mr Akufo-Addo campaigned on stabilising the currency and boosting employment through regional development schemes.