Issifu Mahmoud

Mahmoud Issifu is a Ghanaian politician who serves as the Member of Parliament for the Binduri constituency in the Upper East Region. A member of the National Democratic Congress elected in December 2024 with a commanding majority, he assumed office on 7 January 2025 as the second person to represent a constituency that was created only in 2020 as part of Ghana's expansion of its parliamentary seat count, bringing the parliamentary representation of the Binduri area to a new level of institutional visibility.

The Binduri constituency

Binduri is one of the constituencies created in 2020 when Ghana expanded its Parliament from 275 to 276 seats by carving the new Binduri constituency out of the former Bawku West constituency in the Upper East Region. The constituency covers communities in the Binduri District, an area bordering Burkina Faso to the north and characterised by smallholder farming, livestock and the subsistence agricultural economy that defines much of the Upper East Region's rural hinterland. Its border location means that cross-border trade and the movement of goods and people with Burkina Faso are part of the economic reality of many communities within the constituency.

2024 election and parliamentary career

He contested the Binduri constituency in December 2024 and won decisively with 21,943 votes, defeating the NPP's incumbent Abdulai Abanga who received 7,811 votes and the APC's Alale Amadu who received 160 votes. His majority of more than 14,000 votes in a constituency where the NDC had not previously held a dominant position at that scale reflected the broader NDC sweep of the Upper East Region in 2024, a year when the NDC won all fifteen parliamentary seats across the region. He assumed office on 7 January 2025 as a first-term parliamentarian in the Ninth Parliament.

Political Legacy

Mahmoud Issifu's decisive victory in Binduri, achieved as part of the NDC's clean sweep of the Upper East Region's parliamentary seats in 2024, gives his first parliamentary term a strong community mandate to build on the development agenda of one of Ghana's newest constituencies. His representation of a border constituency creates both opportunities and responsibilities relating to the cross-border dimensions of the Upper East's economic life.