On February 23, many Accra residents excitedly posted photos of Ghana’s former president John Mahama across Facebook after his primary victory. “God Bless Ghana!! God Bless the NDC!! God Bless Our Flagbearer!!!,” read one of posters by the NDC Youth Wing. The NDC is the National Democratic Congress. The Youth Wing also posted the flier, “The Return of #JM To Restore Hope For a Better and More Prosperous Ghana.”

The NDC’s John Mahama was the country’s president from 2012 to 2017 before he lost the presidency to Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The two will compete again in the 2020 election. And just like the United States, the race for the presidency is on. Campaign season has come early. What does the upcoming campaign mean for young people in Accra, and why do so many of the urban poor support Mahama and the NDC?

For many poor urban Ghanaians, especially those who hail from the historically marginalized rural areas outside the Ashanti Region, the NDC signals hope for a better life. It offers a voice for people at the grassroots; a space for uneducated, informal workers to enter the power structures through its local “branches,” and access higher-ups in government who are actually making decisions.

This highly structured political apparatus has its roots in the campaign strategies of its founder Jerry John Rawlings in the 1980s, as well as the successful mobilization tactics used by Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah. Rawlings was known to visit local neighborhoods and participate in communal labor exercises. He took cues from Nkrumah, who built an Independence movement with the support of “verandah boys,” a collection of young people in organizations like the Young Pioneers and Builder’s Brigade who sought control over their lives outside colonial rule, but also outside the traditional leaders and elite who dominated public life.

For many poor urban Ghanaians, especially those who live in its squatter settlements or “slums,” the governing NPP represents the opposite. Many residents tag NPP politicians as arrogant and distant, who speak “big English.” In the NPP, the youth must “wait their turn,” and that turn never seems to come. This is despite the fact that many of their public policies—universal public education and improvements in healthcare benefits—are quite similar.