? Why is this happening? Ghana will hold presidential elections in exactly a year. Power has alternated between the two main political parties — the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) — since the country’s switch to multi-party democracy in 1992. However, critics of the main parties say their governance has been marred by nepotism, corruption, and financial mismanagement.

The five smaller parties are fragmented and their combined tally typically makes up less than 5% of the vote in elections. Campaigning ahead of next year’s election is gathering pace at a time when Ghanaians are enduring the worst economic crisis in a generation — one that forced the NPP government to turn to the IMF for a $3 billion loan.

? Who’s behind this? It is unclear who the man behind the mask on the billboards is, but most people believe it is a businessman named Nana Kwame Bediako, also known as Cheddar. “It is obvious it is Cheddar, the stature of the individual looks exactly like him,” graphic designer Felix Frimpong, an Accra resident, told Semafor Africa.

Bright Simmons, research lead at Imani Centre for Policy in Accra, said on social media platform X that the campaign’s financier is a “maverick businessman,” adding that he believed it was Cheddar. Bediako did not respond to Semafor Africa’s requests for comment.

? How likely is it that a new party could succeed? Despite growing support for the #thenewforce campaign, a new party would have to compete for the third force slot with the Movement of Change, a political group founded by a former trade minister who left the ruling NPP. “A third force will be difficult to emerge at this time to disrupt the NDC or NPP within the next 12 months,” explained Professor Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, a political analyst.