Election 2024: New digital platform rolled out to educate Kumasi voters on party manifestos

As part of efforts to ensure credible and transparent elections, Penplusbytes, a non-profit organization, has launched the Ghana Election 2024 Voters’ Compass platform through its African Election Project.

This innovative digital tool is designed to guide and empower Ghanaian voters by providing accessible information on political party manifestos, helping them to compare party positions on key policy areas and make informed choices.

At the Kumasi edition of Penplusbyte’s policy dialogue, the organisation’s executive director, Jerry Sam described the Voters’ Compass as a tool to help voters align their ideologies and aspirations with party promises.

“This platform is the first step in accountability,” Sam said, “by providing transparency to party manifestos and enabling voters to hold elected officials accountable for their commitments. That’s why we have assembled political leaders, first-time voters especially the youth, CSOs to interact with these political leaders and at the end of the day we will hold them into account and make sure that they deliver their promises to the good people of Ghana”.

“Beyond the voting of informed decisions, it cures issues of disinformation…And this gives you what the political parties are promising. We want to make sure that political parties don’t make whimsical promises, but they make promises that are feasible and can be implemented”, he added.

The Ghana Election 2024 Voters’ Compass was developed in collaboration with VoteSwiper, a German civic-tech organization, and is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office through the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) Zivik Funding Programme.

This web-based platform (voterscompass.africanelections.org), empowers voters to engage actively in the electoral process, contributing to credible elections in 2024.

A unique feature of the Voters’ Compass is its user-friendly interface, integrated with the VoteSwiper tool, allowing users to answer political questions.

For young voters like Belinda Asigri Amadu, “weighing the manifestos of these political parties will influence my votes”. “And so, I will be studying the contents of this web platform and understand what the political parties have for us”.

“For some of us we will compare and contrast the documents, and we will make the right choices”, said Gerald who is a first-time voter.

The policy dialogue is under the theme: “Do Manifestos Matter?” A similar exercise will be held in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital on Thursday (14 November).