Claim: President Mahama has admitted for the first time that the COVID pandemic derailed Ghana’s poverty alleviation efforts.
Source: Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
Verdict: False!
Researched by Samuel Nii Adjetey
Former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has claimed that President John Dramani Mahama has only recently admitted that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected Ghana’s economy.
The president is said to have made the supposed admission while speaking during a side event dubbed “Accra Reset” on the sidelines of the just-ended United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
In a video from the event, President Mahama is heard discussing the devastating effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s economies, stating that the COVID-19 pandemic had in two years set Africa’s poverty reduction fight 20 years back.
RelatedNews
President Mahama said; “In global health, since 2000 alone, more than 50 million lives have been saved through expanded access to vaccines borne out of a new development consensus two decades ago, that provided life-saving tools to billions of the world’s population. This progress deserves recognition. It reminds us of what becomes possible when global solidarity rises to meet global challenges.
“And yet even as we celebrate these gains, the cracks in the global order are growing in the face of current global shifts. The COVID-19 pandemic erased two decades of poverty reduction in less than two years. Climate change has driven nearly 735 million people back into chronic hunger. Almost one in 10 of the world’s population is facing chronic hunger.” [Watch from 1:22:33- 1:23:32]
Bawumia reacts
Reacting to the said video while speaking during his flagbearership campaign tour of the Eastern Region on September 25, 2025, Dr Bawumia said the president deliberately denied the impact of the pandemic on the economy during the 2024 election campaign.
“From 2022, when the impact of COVID-19 hit the country’s economy, prices of goods went up. And during the 2024 election, we said that the cost of living had been largely impacted by COVID-19 and the Russian-Ukraine war. When we said that, they (President Mahama and the NDC) said it was because of economic mismanagement,” Dr Bawumia said.
“They said COVID-19 had no impact on the economy. They said it was rather economic mismanagement. But I have read that President Mahama in New York has said that COVID-19 really impacted economies. He said a lot of our poverty reduction efforts in many, many years have been thwarted by COVID-19.
“The President knew the truth, but he didn’t say it during the campaign. But by the grace of God, he has now said the truth. And by God’s grace, we will all see the truth,” he added.
Aside from Bawumia, former Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, also reiterated the claim that Mahama’s remarks in New York marked his first acknowledgment of the pandemic’s impact.
The claim has since been amplified by multiple social media users, who shared posts asserting that President Mahama only recently admitted that the pandemic, which struck the world five years ago, derailed Ghana’s economic progress and poverty alleviation efforts.
COVID impact and the 2024 elections
The impact of the pandemic on the economy became a contentious issue during the last election campaign. The two main parties, the then ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), held contrasting views on the matter.
While the NPP argued that the pandemic had set the economy back, citing market uncertainties and revenue shortfalls that fueled a rising cost of living, the NDC maintained that Ghana’s economic woes could not be solely blamed on COVID-19 but that it was more due to economic mismanagement by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government.
This fact-check will verify the claim that President Mahama has, for the first time, admitted to the negative impact of COVID-19 on Ghana’s economy.
Fact-check
To verify the claim, GhanaFact reviewed several speeches and addresses delivered by President Mahama while in opposition, long before the UNGA Accra Reset side event, where he referenced the negative impact of COVID-19 on Ghana’s economy.
What has Mahama said previously about the impact of COVID-19 on Ghana’s economy?
In his opening address at the African Economic Congress in 2021, Mahama stressed on how deeply the pandemic had affected Africa’s economic fortunes. He pointed out that COVID-19 massively disrupted the socio-economic progress of the continent.
Mahama said: “My brothers and sisters, I have spent some time on the coronavirus pandemic because the negative impact on the socio-economic fortunes of our African people has been massive.”
“Admittedly, COVID-19 is one of many challenges that has aggravated Africa’s vulnerabilities and exacerbated existing development challenges. COVID is impacting and impeding the previously steady progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose target date is only eight years away,” he added in his address.
During the #thankGhana address on November 11, 2021, which concluded his nationwide thank you tour, Mahama acknowledged the undeniable effects of COVID-19 on Ghana’s economy. However, he criticised the government for using the pandemic as a cover for economic mismanagement, contrasting Ghana’s fiscal outcomes with those of neighbouring countries.
“This government has attempted to conceal its appalling incompetence and recklessness in the management of the economy with the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic posed a major challenge to the global economy including ours, it is quite clear in our case, that it was the desire to win elections at all costs that got this government to engage in unbudgeted consumption expenditure to create an artificial feel-good factor”, he said.
At the 24th Africa Business Conference at Harvard Business School in April 2022, Mahama again highlighted the magnitude of the pandemic’s economic damage. Drawing on data from the Economic Commission of Africa, he explained that COVID-19 triggered the continent’s worst recession in half a century, and made poverty reduction even more difficult.
“Data from the Economic Commission of Africa (ECA) shows that COVID-19 created the continent’s worst recession in 50 years, with real GDP shrinking by 3% in 2020. Before the pandemic, poverty reduction was already a major challenge,” Mahama said.
In his “Ghana at the Crossroads” address in May 2022, Mahama acknowledged that COVID-19 had impacted the global economy but argued that Ghana’s government had benefited from significant pandemic-related inflows. He stressed that the pandemic should not be used as an excuse for the country’s economic decline.
President Mahama said: “The facts reveal that while no one can run away from its impact on the global economy, the COVID-19 pandemic paved way for the Government of Ghana to receive an unprecedented windfall that previous governments could only dream of. Over GHS 30 billion, sufficient to plug the revenue shortfall of GHS 12 billion anticipated for 2020, was made available to this Government from various sources.”
At the launch of the NDC 2024 Manifesto on August 26, 2024, Mahama once again referred to the COVID-19 pandemic, this time reiterating how the government received substantial financial inflows but misused them. He criticised the then-ruling administration for treating the pandemic as a blessing in terms of funds received rather than an adversity.
“The COVID pandemic, rather than being an adversity, turned out to be a blessing. This government received almost GH¢ 25 billion in inflows, most of which were doled out to companies owned by family and relatives,” Mahama stated.
From as early as 2021, President Mahama had consistently acknowledged the economic impact of COVID-19 on Ghana and Africa more broadly.
His speeches at the African Economic Congress, the #thankGhana Address, the Africa Business Conference at Harvard, his “Ghana at the Crossroads” address, and the NDC’s 2024 Manifesto launch all referenced the pandemic’s effects on the economy.
This record shows that his remarks at the UNGA side event was not a “first admission” as suggested, but part of a long-standing critique of how Ghana’s government managed the economy before, during and after COVID-19.
Verdict
The claim that President Mahama has admitted the impact of COVID-19 on Ghana’s economy for the first time is False!
