John Dramani Mahama born 29 November 1958 is a Ghanaian politician, and the president-elect of Ghana, having won the 2024 Ghanaian general election. He will be inaugurated as President of Ghana on 7 January 2025.
John Mahama previously served as President of Ghana from 24 July 2012 to 7 January 2017 and Vice President of Ghana from January 2009 to July 2012. He took office as president on 24 July 2012, following the death of his predecessor, John Atta Mills.
A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mahama was Member of Parliament for Bole Bamboi from 1997 to 2009 and served as Deputy Minister for Communication between 1997 and 1998 before becoming the substantive Minister for Communications in 1998. Mahama is the first vice president to assume the presidency following the death of his predecessor, and is the first head of state of Ghana to have been born after Ghana's independence in 1957.
He was elected in the December 2012 election to serve a full-term as president. He contested re-election for a second term in the 2016 election, but lost to the New Patriotic Party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. This made him the first president in the history of Ghana to not have won a consecutive second term. Mahama was again the NDC's candidate for president in the 2020 election, where he lost to Akufo-Addo. He was re-elected president in the 2024 election, defeating the incumbent vice president Mahamudu Bawumia, making him the first president in Ghanaian history to be democratically elected to a non-consecutive second term.