John Mahama

John Dramani Mahama (; born 29 November 1958) is a Ghanaian politician who served as President of Ghana from 24 July 2012 to 7 January 2017. He previously served as Vice President of Ghana from January 2009 to July 2012, and took office as president on 24 July 2012 following the death of his predecessor, John Evans Fiifi Attah Mills. A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), he 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 take over the presidency from the death of his predecessor, John Evans Atta Mills, and is the first head of state of Ghana to have been born after Ghana's independence. He was elected after December 2012 election to serve as full-time President. He contested re-election for a second term in the 2016 election, but lost to the New Patriotic Party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, in 2016. This made him the first President in the history of Ghana to not have won a second term. Early years A member of the Gonja ethnic group in the Savanna Region of Ghana, Mahama hails from Bole in the Savanna Region. Mahama was born on November 29, 1958 in Damongo, an area in present-day West Gonja District. His father, Emmanuel Adama Mahama, a wealthy rice farmer and teacher, was the first Member of Parliament for the West Gonja constituency and the first Regional Commissioner of the Northern Region during the First Republic under Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Mahama's father also served as a senior presidential advisor during Ghana's Third Republic under Hilla Limann who was overthrown in 1981 by Jerry Rawlings. Mahama had his primary education at the Accra Newtown Experimental School (ANT1) before going to boarding school at Achimota Primary School. He completed secondary school at Ghana Secondary School (Tamale, Northern region). He proceeded to the University of Ghana, Legon, receiving a bachelor's degree in history in 1981 and a postgraduate diploma in communication studies in 1986. As a student, he was a member of Commonwealth Hall (Legon). He also studied at the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow in the Soviet Union, specializing in social psychology; he obtained a postgraduate degree in 1988. Early career After completing his undergraduate education, Mahama taught history at the secondary school level for a few years.