Former football star George Weah has been elected as Liberia’s president.
With nearly all ballots from Tuesday’s run-off vote counted, Mr Weah is well ahead of opponent Joseph Boakai with more than 60% of the vote.
As news of Mr Weah’s victory emerged, his supporters began celebrating in the capital Monrovia.
He will succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president, in Liberia’s first democratic handover in decades.
“My fellow Liberians, I deeply feel the emotion of all the nation,” Mr Weah wrote on Twitter after the results were announced.
“I measure the importance and the responsibility of the immense task which I embrace today. Change is on.”
Who is George Weah?
Mr Weah, who was raised in a slum in Liberia’s capital Monrovia, starred at top-flight European football clubs Paris St-Germain (PSG) and AC Milan, before ending his career in England with brief stays at Chelsea and Manchester City.
He is the only African footballer to have won both Fifa World Player of the Year and the prestigious Ballon D’Or.
How did we get here?
Liberia, founded by freed US slaves in the 19th Century, has not had a smooth transfer of power from one elected president to another since 1944.
Mrs Sirleaf defeated Mr Weah in the presidential election run-off in 2005 and took office a year later, after the end of a brutal civil war that saw President Charles Taylor forced out by rebels. Taylor is now serving a 50-year prison sentence in the UK for war crimes related to the conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
This time Mr Weah’s campaign – under the Coalition for Democratic Change banner – appealed to the youth vote, while incumbent Vice-President Boakai was seen as old and out of touch.
But Mr Weah’s election is not without controversy, as his running mate was Jewel Taylor, former wife of the jailed president.
The biggest trophy of his life
Hundreds of jubilant supporters of George Weah took to the streets shortly after the electoral commission chairman announced the result.
Election observers, both domestic and foreign, have praised the conduct of the election and say it showed a marked improvement from the first round in October.
This is third time lucky for a man used to winning trophies but who found it hard to win this, the biggest award of his life. And he has his work cut out for him.
Liberia has stabilised in the past decade after a long and bloody civil war. But it is still struggling with acute poverty and corruption. From producing Africa’s first elected female president, now it has produced its first ex-footballer head of state.
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Why a run-off?
Mr Weah, 51, won the first round of the presidential election in October with 38.4% of the vote, compared with the 28.8% won by second-placed Mr Boakai, 73. The failure of any candidate to secure an outright majority forced the run-off.
The National Elections Commission (NEC) said on Thursday that with 98.1% of the run-off vote counted, Mr Weah had won 61.5% of the vote while Mr Boakai was far behind with 38.5%.
Turnout was low – put at 56% by election officials – for the vote, which had been delayed from its initial date, 7 November, following a legal challenge brought by a representative for the opposition Liberty Party, Charles Brumskine.
Mr Brumskine said the first round vote – which he came third in – had been marred by “massive fraud and irregularities”, but in December the Supreme Court ruled evidence of fraud was insufficient to merit a re-run of the opening round.
Election observers have praised the conduct of the poll.
More than two million people were eligible to cast their ballots in the nation of 4.6 million people.
How a footballer became a president
George Weah has lived a life in three acts.
It has seen him move from a childhood in the slums of the capital Monrovia, to Europe’s most famous football pitches and now he is set to be entering Liberia’s halls of power as president.
So how did the man known as “King George” to his supporters come to be contesting for Liberia’s top job?
Growing up
It will take you less than half an hour to drive between Clara Town, the slum where Mr Weah grew up, and the Executive Mansion.
And yet, they are a world apart.
Mr Weah was sent to Clara Town – an area built on a swamp and beset by disease and overcrowding – to live with his grandmother by his parents, who lived in south-eastern Grand Kru County, one of Liberia’s most under-developed areas.
This less-than-auspicious start is one of the things which makes him such a hero to his supporters.
“Weah is grass roots, a son of the soil – he is a star, but he has the country at heart,” Oliver Myers, an unemployed 39-year-old from just outside Monrovia, told news agency Reuters this year.
It was Mr Weah’s talent and determination which gave him a route out of Clara Town. As a teenager, he began playing league football in Liberia, eventually dropping out of school in his final year to concentrate on the sport – a decision that led to riches but which would come back to haunt him almost two decades later.
Football star
Mr Weah’s life changed forever when, aged 21, Arsene Wenger spotted him playing for a team in Cameroon.
The manager brought him over to Europe, where he would play for AS Monaco. From there, it was on to Paris Saint Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea, Manchester City and Olympique Marseille.
George Weah: Five fast facts
PSG George Weah (R) kicks the ball during the Champions league match Spartak Moscow – Paris-Saint-Germain, on September 28, 1994, in Moscow.Image copyright AFP Born 1 October, 1966
Made his name playing for Monaco for five seasons, from 1987.
Only African to ever win the Ballon d’Or
Retired from football in 2002
First ran for president in 2005
George Weah: Five fast facts
PSG George Weah (R) kicks the ball during the Champions league match Spartak Moscow – Paris-Saint-Germain, on September 28, 1994, in Moscow.Image copyright AFP Born 1 October, 1966
Made his name playing for Monaco for five seasons, from 1987
Only African to ever win the Ballon d’Or
Retired from football in 2002
First ran for president in 2005
Along the way, the Liberian would pick up a cabinet-full of accolades, winning both Fifa World Player of the Year and the Ballon d’Or in 1995.
But he never forgot his home country, by then tangled in a civil war which would claim about 250,000 lives.
He often paid out of his own pocket for the cash-strapped national football team to travel to matches abroad. A passionate musician, he also joined up with fellow African stars to produce a song to discourage wars in Africa.
He would turn to music again years later, in 2014, when he and a popular Ghanaian musician would produce a song to create awareness about Ebola.
