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BloombergJan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- John Atta Mills, a law professor, was confirmed as the winner of Ghana’s runoff presidential election, securing the right to decide how income from recent oil discoveries is spent.
Atta Mills, 64, head of the National Democratic Congress party, won 50.23 percent of ballots cast on Dec. 28, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, chairman of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, told reporters in the capital, Accra, today. Nana Akufo-Addo, the candidate for the former ruling New Patriotic Party, polled 49.77 percent.
“It brings us our second peaceful alteration of power,” Emmanuel Gyimah-Boardi, executive director of the Accra-based Center for Democratic Development, said in an interview. “It’s a rare thing in Africa. It’s even more rare for it to happen twice in the same country.”
Atta Mills’s victory completes a change in power in the West African nation, the world’s second-biggest cocoa grower and Africa’s No. 2 gold producer, with the NDC having ousted the NPP as the largest party in parliament in a Dec. 7 vote. Ghana may join its neighbors as an oil exporter as early as 2010, when U.K. explorer Tullow Oil Plc expects to begin producing from its Jubilee field that contains an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of crude.
Atta Mills faces challenges including reining in double- digit inflation caused by rising food prices and boosting economic growth in the face of the global economic recession. About 40 percent of Ghana’s population lives in poverty, according to the Web site of the U.S.-based Institute for Food and Development Policy.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=a9.x4buzFbBU&refer=africa
another change candidate over the ruling party. May a positive change come to the planet.
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