Ghana to Botswana: Why African voters are throwing out ruling parties

Several countries recorded total electoral power transfers while opposition groups made significant wins in others.

Jubilant victory songs filled the air in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Monday as supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party filled the streets to celebrate their candidate, former President John Dramani Mahama’s win in an election that will once again make him head of state of the West African nation.

Decked in the party’s colours of red, white and black, supporters, young and old, blew on flutes, whistled and drummed thunderously on plastic buckets, as they hugged and danced in front of the NDC headquarters in Accra’s Adabraka neighbourhood.

Their joy was hardly surprising. Mahama’s defeat of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, the candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), was astonishingly complete. Experts predicted a very close vote, and maybe even a run-off, but Mahama wiped the floor with the NPP and won by an unprecedented landslide. For the first time in the country, a clear winner emerged within hours of polls closing on Sunday. By nightfall, Bawumia, who was behind by an unheard of 1.6 million votes, conceded defeat.

“We’ve not seen such a massive gap before in any elections since 1992 because Ghana elections are usually closely fought,” researcher Emmanuel Yeboah of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) told Al Jazeera.

The scenes in Accra marked the culmination of a surprising election year across the African continent, during which opposition movements made big waves, either totally ejecting incumbent parties from power or significantly loosening their grip.