"(Reuters) - John Atta Mills of Ghana's opposition( HE WAS NOT IN POWER ) National Democratic Congress has won the presidential election in the West African country, the electoral commission said on Saturday.
He will succeed President John Kufuor, who is due to stand down on January 7 after the maximum two terms.
Here are some facts about Ghana.
GEOGRAPHY: Area is 239,460 sq. km. (92,440 sq. miles), a bit smaller than Britain. Ghana is bordered by Burkina Faso (to the north), Ivory Coast (west), and Togo (east). The Atlantic Ocean lies to the south.
LANGUAGE: English is the official language, but local languages include Akan, Ga, Fanti, Hausa, Fanteewe, Gaadanhe, Dagbandim and Mamprussi.
POPULATION: 23 million. There are seven main ethnic groups, including the Akan (Ashanti and Fanti), 44 percent, in the mid-southern part of the country. There are Mossi-Dagomba, Ewe and Ga-Adangbe minorities, among others.
RELIGION: Christianity 50 percent, traditional African religions 32 percent, Islam 13 percent.
ECONOMY:
* World's No. 2 cocoa( YES ) grower after neighboring Ivory Coast, producing around one fifth of world supply. Government plans to increase output by around half to 1 million tonnes by 2010.
* Africa's second biggest gold( GOLD ) miner after South Africa, with 2007 output of nearly 2.5 million ounces.
* Britain's Tullow Oil and private-owned Kosmos Energy plan to start producing 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil offshore in late 2010, rising later to 250,000 bpd.( OIL )
* Economic reforms under Kufuor's administration are credited with boosting growth and helping secure billions of dollars in debt relief( NB ).
* Economic growth forecast at 6.5 percent for 2008, slowing to 5.8 percent in 2009/10, then accelerating to 6.8 percent by 2013, according to the IMF.
* Annual inflation has eased since an 18.4 percent peak in June, and the cedi currency has stabilized after falling 17 percent against the dollar in the first seven months of 2008.
* $750 million Eurobond issue in 2007 was sub-Saharan Africa's first outside South Africa.
* Ghana's stock exchange is one of the top-performing markets in 2008 with the all-share index up around 60 percent, although trade is illiquid( HARD TO DO ) with as little as 600 cedis worth of trade in one session in October.
* Power shortages in recent years have added to business costs, curbing mining output and forcing the closure of the VALCO aluminum smelter, which the government wants to sell.
HISTORY:
* Ghana was named after a powerful West African empire that ended in the 12th century and based its power on gold. None of modern day Ghana lies within the ancient empire.( THAT'S INTERESTING )
* From the 17th to the 19th century, Ghana was the seat of the powerful Ashanti empire, which was defeated by the British.
* In 1957 the former British colony of Gold Coast became the first country in black Sub-Saharan Africa to shake off colonial rule, inspiring liberation struggles around the continent.
* Independence leader Kwame Nkrumah was a founding father of Pan-Africanism and a figurehead among Africa's independence leaders with his concept of African socialism( TRUE ).
* But the economy collapsed, Nkrumah became increasingly authoritarian and many celebrated when he was overthrown by a coup in 1966 while he was on a state visit to China.
* Ghana then tottered from one military coup to the next before holding its first democratic elections in 1992.
* Former President Jerry John Rawlings, who seized control in a coup in 1979 and again in 1981, left office in 2000 but remains a popular and charismatic critic of the government."
By Kwasi Kpodo
ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghana's opposition leader John Atta Mills won a last run-off vote and was declared president-elect on Saturday, sweeping his party back to power after eight years.
Results of voting in a final constituency on Friday showed Mills, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), narrowly defeated Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). The NPP lost its parliamentary majority last month.
"I want to assure everybody that I will be president for all. There will be no discrimination," Mills said in a victory speech to thousands of NDC supporters who thronged the streets around his office in the capital Accra.
The poll, one of the closest leadership elections in Africa, has raised tensions in the gold- and cocoa-exporting country whose political stability has attracted growing numbers of foreign investors as it prepares to produce oil( OIL ) in late 2010.
Legal challenges and accusations of violence by both main parties had threatened to mar a vote seen as a chance to bolster Africa's battered democratic credentials after flawed and bloody polls in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Mills took a conciliatory tone.
"I would want to congratulate all other contestants, especially Nana Akufo-Addo, for giving us a good fight. It is my hope that we will be able to work together to build a better Ghana," he said. Then an aide popped open a bottle of champagne.
There was no immediate reaction from Akufo-Addo's camp. International monitors say voting has been mostly peaceful( GOOD ).
Announcing the results at a news conference in the capital Accra, Electoral Commission Chairman Kwadwo Afari-Gyan said turnout in the run-off vote, which was held in most of the country on December 28, was 72.91 percent.
Mills won 50.23 percent of the votes against 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, whose party had no immediate comment.( WOW )
Neither candidate won a majority in the original December 7 poll and run-off voting in all but one of the West African country's 230 constituencies last Sunday was inconclusive, so the election was decided by Friday's voting in the farming constituency of Tain.( HOW INTERESTING )
FROM RULING PARTY TO LOSING PARTY
The NPP, which lost its parliamentary majority in the December 7 poll but remains in power until President John Kufuor steps down on January 7, boycotted the Tain vote over security concerns but failed to prevent the poll taking place.
Outside Mills's office, a woman dragged an effigy of an elephant -- the NPP's campaign mascot -- in a mock funeral as other NDC supporters chanted "Elephants, go back to the bush!."
"You have cause to celebrate, but let's not do anything to provoke disunity. We must know that this is only one day in a journey of a million miles," Mills told his supporters.
Each side has accused the other's activists of violence and irregularities and appealed to the electoral commission to review some of the results from last Sunday's vote.
Afari-Gyan said the commission had found no evidence to call the results into question and declared Mills president-elect.
"I think there is demand for change ... power outages and corruption in the NPP have really been the key issues for people, "Kissy Agyeman, Africa analyst at London-based consultancy Global Insight, told Reuters before the result was announced.
The center-left NDC has promised change after eight years of NPP rule, though analysts say there are few policy differences.( OK )
Kufuor was voted to power when Mills's NDC ally, former coup leader Jerry Rawlings, gave up power in early 2000 as required by the constitution which his own administration had introduced.
Kufuor's pro-market rule has seen Ghana's economy become one of the most attractive investment destinations in the region.
But critics say his administration has failed to tackle widespread corruption, including smuggling of cocaine and other drugs in which administration officials have been implicated( LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE ON THE PLANET."
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