This article was originally published by World Politics Review.
On Dec. 7, Ghanaians will go to the polls to vote for a president and 275 members of the national legislature.* While there are 39 aspirants for the highest office, the real contest will be between the two political parties that have alternately run the country since the end of military rule in 1993: the incumbent New Patriotic Party, or NPP, and the opposition National Democratic Congress, NDC.
Regardless of which one of them wins, Ghana will be heralded in Western capitals as a rare “model democracy” in West Africa, a region whose democracies are currently suffering from a series of coups and long-standing insurgencies. In some ways, this is understandable and deserved. Ghana’s two leading parties have a solid record of peaceful transfers of power between them since the return of democracy. However, under the surface, fragility fueled by Ghana’s political and electoral system is threatening the foundations of the country’s democracy.
Ghanaian activists and civil society groups have long decried how both the NDC and NPP use state resources to cultivate clientelist networks for partisan benefit. A recent report from the Clingendael Institute builds on this criticism by analyzing in particular two divisive tactics both parties use that contribute to undermining stability across the country: intervening in local chieftaincy disputes and engaging political vigilantes.
The political fragility these practices fuel is particularly worrying in light of the surrounding region’s security landscape. Insurgents aligned with al-Qaida and the Islamic State already control large swaths of the Sahel and have begun to launch attacks in the northern parts of coastal West Africa. These groups expanded partly by exploiting local grievances against predatory states and unjust social orders. Today, militants are active just across Ghana’s borders in neighboring Burkina Faso and Togo. While Ghana has not been directly attacked, insurgents do use its territory as a safe haven, according to Ghana’s ambassador to Burkina Faso.
In response to this new threat, the World Bank, the European Union and the United States have together announced over $1 billion in aid to reinforce national security services, support local governance and build social cohesion in the northern regions of Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. As diplomats, development workers and military advisers descend on Accra as part of this effort, it is crucial that they look beyond the democratic veneer of elections and ensure that their efforts also address the divisive and violent elements of Ghanaian politics that contribute to the vulnerabilities that extremists exploit.
Chieftaincy Conflicts
Chieftaincy conflicts are key sources of fragility in Ghana’s northern regions. While some of the efforts of successive governments to address these conflicts have been commendable, there is still much to be done. Some of these disputes are within royal families, such as the Dagbon succession crisis, which since 2002 has claimed hundreds of lives. In others, the dispute is between ethnic groups, as in the town of Bawku, where over 100 people have been killed since fighting reignited between ethnic Kusasi and Mamprusi in 2021. Between the high stakes of these conflicts, the proliferation of light weapons and chronic youth unemployment, when these disputes escalate they can plunge whole communities into an effective state of war.
Officially, chiefs are forbidden from running for office or being a member of a political party. In reality, they are considered key nodes in both NDC and NPP clientelist networks, particularly in rural areas. Both parties rely on chiefs to maintain their voting blocs, and chiefs use their connections with politicians to outflank rivals and deliver services to their communities. When chieftaincy disputes occur, some chiefs call in favors from their political partners—who have often stacked local government positions with partisan supporters—instead of relying on formal justice mechanisms, leading to further violence and intractability of conflicts.
Community members in the small town of Wenchiki on the border with Togo claim that just this kind of political interference helped escalate a conflict there three years ago that has since claimed the lives of a dozen people in ambushes and reprisal attacks. After a new chief was anointed amid controversy in 2021, subchiefs in surrounding villages chose sides between the two rival factions, extending the conflict into dozens of communities. Each side enjoyed support from political patrons in either the NDC and NPP, and residents claim that they have leveraged these ties to secure access to arms.
While politicized chieftaincy disputes such as the one in Wenchiki are problematic in their own right, they may also provide an opening for insurgents should they infiltrate further into Ghana. Both parties have ramped up their support to their client chiefs in the runup to the December election. But if precedent is any indication, once the voting is over, that support will be reduced, at least temporarily. When it is, belligerents may turn to other parties for assistance. Insurgents in the Sahel are known to have intervened in disputes over local leadership positions in an effort to infiltrate communities. So far, there is no evidence of this occurring in Ghana. But with insurgents operating less than 15 miles from Wenchiki, the practice of leveraging chieftaincy disputes for political gain will continue to leave Ghana vulnerable to extremist encroachment.
Political Vigilantes
Another feature of Ghana’s political and electoral system contributing to fragility is political vigilantism. Following the return of multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, both the NDC and NPP expanded their sponsorship of groups of young men, some of them armed with firearms, to protect their rallies and interfere strategically with voting on Election Day. While these vigilante groups had explicit links with political parties, they also constructed their own identities, including by adopting names and distinctive clothing.
As elections grew more competitive, these groups have become more important to securing victory. As a result, in particularly tight races, vigilantes are known to extract concessions from their political patrons, such as promises of positions in Ghana’s security and intelligence services. This is especially true for the party that is in opposition, which often does not trust state security forces to protect their rallies. The result is a reversal of the power dynamic between the vigilante groups and their political patrons. As a vigilante leader in Tamale explained, “We make our own decisions, and even sometimes the party can even call on us to back down and we will refuse to listen.”
In 2019, Ghana’s Parliament voted to ban vigilante groups, motivated in part by politicians’ fears that the groups were gaining too much leverage. Without explicit political patronage, some of the larger groups disbanded. However, the ban is not strictly enforced, and other groups have simply renamed themselves, abandoned their identifiable clothing and shed their political affiliation. These “new” vigilante groups, which were active in the 2020 elections and are already organizing for December, still sell their services, albeit with less oversite from political parties.
With direct support from politicians waning, vigilantes have begun to rely more on other sources of income, such as artisanal mining and working as so-called land guards—young men who are paid to forcefully defend land in local disputes. A politician in Upper East region claimed that some even engage in banditry, a claim that was echoed by a civil society activist in Upper West region.
The continued existence of these vigilante groups is a threat to Ghana’s stability in and of itself. However, it takes on an added risk with insurgents lurking on the country’s borders. On one hand, insurgents have infiltrated remote areas of southern Burkina Faso and northern Benin by co-opting bandits, smugglers and artisanal miners—trades that vigilantes are increasingly taking up. On the other, these groups’ association with politicians and government officials also poses a risk, as it could make them a target if insurgents infiltrate further into Ghana. Either way, the continued existence of political vigilantes poses a clear threat to Ghana’s long-term stability.
Addressing Political Fragility
Ghana’s history of relatively peaceful voting and transfers of power is commendable. However, focusing solely on Election Day and the presidential inauguration obscures elements of the political system that are contributing to fragility. In a bid for votes in rural areas, politicians in both the NDC and NPP are exacerbating existing chieftaincy conflicts. And both parties continue to recruit young men to commit violence on a semi-regular basis, then discard them to pursue other semi-legal activities.
Not only does the ensuing division and violence make communities more vulnerable should insurgents aligned with al-Qaida and the Islamic State seek to expand their presence in the country, it also saps Ghana’s development potential.
As diplomats, development workers and military trainers support Ghana’s development and security programs in an effort to prevent insurgents from further establishing themselves, it is crucial that their efforts do not ignore or, even worse, inadvertently reinforce some of the more divisive and violent elements of the country’s political system.
Supporting good-faith efforts to resolve chieftaincy disputes, including some that have been initiated by the Ghanaian state over the years, would help address a key driver of conflict across the country. And enforcing the ban on vigilantes by prosecuting their patrons using the Vigilantes and Related Offences Act passed in 2019, while demobilizing those that still exist and providing other pathways for legal employment, would reduce participation in illicit and semi-licit industries. Ultimately, all efforts need to be rooted in understanding Ghana’s politics and how it drives fragility.
While Western governments are largely interested in addressing these issues as they relate to the insurgents on Ghana’s borders, Ghana itself has a much more immediate reason for doing so: It will not be able to foster inclusive growth for all its citizens so long as its political system drives fragility.
*Editor’s note: The original version of this article stated that 175 parliamentary representatives will be elected on Dec. 7. There will 275. WPR regrets the error.
This article is based on a report by the Clingendael Institute that can be found here.
