As Ghana's sixth president of the Fourth Republic, John Dramani Mahama of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has formally assumed power by taking the presidential and oath of loyalty.

Gertrude Torkornoo, Ghana's Chief Justice, administered his oath of office on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, in parliament at Accra's Black Star Square.


He was sworn in after Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the first female vice president of Ghana, who also took the oath of office and the vice presidential oath.

In addition to being the fourth president of the Fourth Republic of Ghana, Mr. John Mahama held the position from January 7, 2013, until January 6, 2017.

Mr. John Mahama, who was born in Damongo, in what is now the Savannah Region of Ghana, 66 years ago to Mr. E. A. Mahama and Madam Abiba Nnaba, has held positions in every political office.

He served as President of the Republic of Ghana, Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, Deputy Minister of Communications, and Member of Parliament for the Bole-Bamboi Constituency.



Mahama believes that the combination of history, communications, and social psychology classes he took during his undergraduate and doctoral degrees greatly influenced his opinions, ideas, and comprehension of people and helped him grow as a person.

All areas of Ghana's economy, including education, health, ports and harbors, aviation, rail, oil and gas, ICT, and many more, saw some infrastructural improvement during President Mahama's first term in office.

His foresight and calculated investments in these fields firmly established the nation as a Lower-Middle-Income nation for its upcoming stage of growth.

President Mahama is committed to investing in people, not only in socioeconomic infrastructure. This clearly demonstrates his dedication to fairness and social justice, especially in light of his well-recognized initiatives to promote the rights of women and girls in many fields.

John Mahama gave several women important positions in his administration, further demonstrating his dedication to women's empowerment.

His historic choice to name Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang as his vice presidential candidate in 2020 was unprecedented for a major Ghanaian political party.


In 2024, he made the same audacious decision, and Ghana welcomed its first female vice president after winning.

Mahama loves to read, write, and study history. He has produced multiple works and contributed to numerous newspapers over his career. His first book, "My First Coup d'État and Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa," is a memoir.

President Mahama's passion for reading and his insatiable curiosity are matched by his keen interest in agriculture and technology. He has a deep, emotional, and ingrained relationship to agriculture that stems from his childhood. In the government of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, his father was a well-known rice grower, teacher, and minister.

President Mahama is committed to raising agricultural output and works to inspire the next generation to view farming as a feasible and lucrative enterprise, especially by utilizing value addition and technology to its fullest potential.

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Commission was previously chaired by President Mahama. He was the former chair of the African Union's High-Level African commerce Committee and is a fervent supporter of intra-African commerce.

He helped establish the framework for the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which currently has its secretariat in Ghana.

In addition to being the current chair of the TANA Forum, a high-level forum on security in Africa with its headquarters located in Ethiopia, President Mahama served as the inaugural co-chair of the United Nations Advocacy Group on the Sustainable Development Goals.

John Mahama has received numerous honorary doctoral degrees from prestigious universities across the world, including the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, the Lyon Business School in France, and Ekiti State University, Ilorin University, and Igbinedion University in Nigeria, in appreciation of his outstanding leadership and role model contributions on the African continent and beyond.


John Dramani Mahama is the first president of Ghana to be democratically elected to a second, non-consecutive term after winning a landslide victory in the December 2024 elections.

President Mahama is a model family man who upholds Christian principles. For more than thirty-two years, he has been blissfully married to Lordina Dramani Mahama.