Anti-Graft Fight Helps Ghana's President Win Over Skeptics

Few Ghanaians were surprised when President Nana Akufo-Addo pledged that he would fulfill his campaign promise to fight graft. But what’s caught their attention was his appointment this year of an opposition stalwart to the newly created role of Special Prosecutor of corruption cases.

The establishment of the anti-graft office headed by former Attorney General Martin Amidu is among a string of measures that Akufo-Addo, 74, has taken to bolster the cocoa- and gold-rich West African nation that was weighed down for years by power outages, state bureaucracy and pervasive corruption. Since he assumed office last year, Ghana has become one of Africa’s star economic performers, recording 8.5 percent growth in 2017 after hovering around 4 percent in the three preceding years.