Jubilant victory songs filled the air in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Monday as supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party filled the streets to celebrate their candidate, former President John Dramani Mahama’s win in an election that will once again make him head of state of the West African nation.

Decked in the party’s colours of red, white and black, supporters, young and old, blew on flutes, whistled and drummed thunderously on plastic buckets, as they hugged and danced in front of the NDC headquarters in Accra’s Adabraka neighbourhood.

Their joy was hardly surprising. Mahama’s defeat of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, the candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), was astonishingly complete. Experts predicted a very close vote, and maybe even a run-off, but Mahama wiped the floor with the NPP and won by an unprecedented landslide. For the first time in the country, a clear winner emerged within hours of polls closing on Sunday. By nightfall, Bawumia, who was behind by an unheard of 1.6 million votes, conceded defeat.

“We’ve not seen such a massive gap before in any elections since 1992 because Ghana elections are usually closely fought,” researcher Emmanuel Yeboah of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) told Al Jazeera.

The scenes in Accra marked the culmination of a surprising election year across the African continent, during which opposition movements made big waves, either totally ejecting incumbent parties from power or significantly loosening their grip.

From some 12 general elections, four countries (Ghana, Botswana, Mauritius and Senegal) alongside the breakaway, self-governed region of Somaliland, recorded total transfers of power. Two others (South Africa and Namibia) saw significant opposition gains.

Out with the old, in with the new

While it is impossible to box all African countries and their electorates together, voters largely assessed some of the same key issues in deciding who to vote for, experts say.

“There’s a sense that voters want to punish parties for failure to boost economies, create jobs and fight corruption,” Graham Hopwood, executive director of the Namibia-based Institute for Public Policy Research, told Al Jazeera. In some cases, opposition groups played on these failures in their campaigns, and bonded to get stronger, he said.

Soaring inflation in Ghana – the kind not felt in a decade – corruption, and severe environmental degradation from illegal mining or “galamsey” proved the final death knell for the ruling NPP government led by President Nana Akufo-Addo.

The NDC campaigned on the government’s failures, but it was ultimately the low turnout of the NPP’s own support base that hurt the party, aptly reflecting how much it had let Ghanaians down. Voter turnout on Sunday was only 60 percent because many NPP supporters, frustrated with the government and lacking faith in the opposition, did not vote, Yeboah of the CDD said.

“NPP thought they would get more votes because of their free senior high school policy but ultimately, they were punished,” he said, referring to the landmark 2017 policy of the Akufo-Addo government that made senior secondary education free for all.

Some of the more seismic shifts occurred in the Southern African region where liberation parties, once loved for ending colonialism or apartheid, are increasingly unpopular, particularly among young voters. That’s because young people did not live that history, Hopwood said, and thus, lack the sense of nostalgia that held these parties in place.

South Africa led with the first shocker in early June when the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 30 years.

The party, once seen as a beacon of hope for ushering in democracy after apartheid, faces criticism for South Africa’s severe economic downturn that has reduced the continental giant to a country racked by poverty, unemployment and embarrassing power cuts.

Internal battles between President Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor, former President Jacob Zuma, further divided its traditional support base. ANC votes, which had steadily declined in recent elections, slipped further to 40 percent this time, less than the number required to form a government, forcing the crippled party into a historic “unity government” with the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party and six others.

It was a more complete loss for Botswana’s dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in November, which had ruled the country since independence in 1966. Opposition movements, banded under the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and led by lawyer Duma Boko, denied President Mokgweetsi Masisi a second term and ended the BDP’s 58-year dominance by a landslide. The party — faulted by voters for a declining diamond economy — won only four seats, down from its previous 38 seats in the 69-seat strong parliament.

Youth fury and lingering COVID-19 anger

Elsewhere on the continent, young people’s fury over corruption proved pivotal, in addition to anger over jobs and the economy. In Senegal’s March polls, former President Macky Sall’s attempts to run for an unconstitutional third term led to violent protests, and led to the ushering in of President Bassirou Faye’s PASTEF party.

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