The large lady is hoisted on to the small white horse, which is decked out in the colours of the New Patriotic party. She sits triumphant, draped head to toe in the party’s red, white and blue regalia, while onlookers snap her picture. Thousands have streamed to the Ghanaian opposition party’s pre-election rally. Though they are NPP to a man, woman and baby (if the colours of swaddling are anything to go by), everyone asked expresses a desire for free and fair elections. It seems more important to them than the result itself.

“Democracy has really helped Ghana,” says Nana Anim Obiri, a chief from the eastern town of Adukrom, even as he voices concern that this week’s general election — the first round of which is today — may be rigged. “Democracy is a competition, so you have to do something to get re-elected. If it weren’t for democracy, Ghana would not have travelled this far.”

The chief’s sentiments may strike one as touching — naive, even. Perhaps Ghana would have done better under a dictatorship (in truth, it tried that without much success). In any case, the majority of Africans do not like dictators. In a continent of strongmen — and in an era when caudillo-style politicians from Russia to China and from Japan to the US hold sway — belief in democracy in Africa is alive and well.