Liberia President George Weah on Friday conceded defeat to opposition leader Joseph Boakai after a tight presidential election race.
According to the country’s electoral commission, Boakai, 78, a former vice president who lost to Weah in the 2017 election, led with 50.9% of the vote over Weah's 49.1%, with nearly all the votes counted.
This marks a turnaround from 2017, when Weah, buoyed by a wave of hope, trounced Boakai with 62 percent of the vote.
Boakai, a softly spoken career politician, emerged neck-and-neck with Weah in the first round of voting in October but below the 50% needed to secure an outright victory, leading to Tuesday's run-off.
Liberia is struggling to recover from two civil wars that killed more than 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003, and from a 2013-16 Ebola epidemic that killed thousands.
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