Lawrencia Dziwornu

Lawrencia Adwoa Dziwornu is a Ghanaian politician who serves as the Member of Parliament for the Akuapem South constituency in the Eastern Region. A member of the National Democratic Congress who won the seat in December 2024 by the narrowest of margins, ending more than a decade of NDC exclusion from a constituency in the Akuapem hills area, she assumed office on 7 January 2025 as a first-term parliamentarian representing one of the Eastern Region's historically and culturally significant constituencies.

Political career

Dziwornu contested the NDC's parliamentary primaries for Akuapem South in May 2023, winning with 470 votes from 906 votes cast, securing the party's nomination for the 2024 general election. In the December 2024 general election, her victory was among the most closely fought in the entire country: she received 15,438 votes representing 50.22 per cent of valid ballots, defeating the NPP's Eric Yeboah Apeadu who received 15,304 votes representing 49.78 per cent. Her winning margin was just 134 votes from more than 30,000 cast, a result that underscored both the constituency's competitive nature and the significance of her win as the first time in over a decade that the NDC had captured the Akuapem South parliamentary seat.

Constituency context

Akuapem South is a constituency in the Akuapem South District, covering the southern communities of the Akuapem hills ridge in the Eastern Region, an area known for its relatively cool climate, its botanical heritage including the Aburi Botanical Gardens, and its historical significance as a centre of missionary education and Christian community development in the nineteenth century. The constituency's communities include Aburi, Mamfe and surrounding towns whose economies blend horticulture, tourism, small-scale commerce and the professional services of residents who commute to the Accra urban area.

Political Legacy

Lawrencia Dziwornu's 134-vote margin in Akuapem South is one of the smallest individual parliamentary majorities in the Ninth Parliament and one of the most compelling constituency-level results of the 2024 election cycle. Her historic status as the first NDC MP for Akuapem South in over a decade gives her first term a significance that her razor-thin majority will be measured against throughout the parliament.