According to results seen on the NEC website, Mr Boakai has received 193,041 votes while Mr Weah has received 187,615 votes.

The National Election Commission (NEC) of Liberia Wednesday commenced the announcement of the results of the run-off presidential election held on Tuesday.

Former Vice President of Liberia and candidate of the Unity Party, Joseph Boakai, took an early lead in the first set of results announced by NEC chairperson Davidetta Lansanah.

According to results seen on the NEC website, Mr Boakai has received 193,041 votes while Mr Weah has received 187,615 votes. This is only 22 per cent of all polling units to be counted.

The first round of the election was held on 10 October with 20 candidates competing for the highest seat of power in the West African country. Of the 20 candidates, none could secure the requisite over 50 per cent required to emerge president and as such, the two candidates with the highest number of votes headed to a run-off which took place on Tuesday.

To win the run-off, either of the candidates must secure the highest vote.

This is the fourth election Liberia is holding in its recent history (since the end of its civil war).

It is Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed American and Caribbean slaves. The country is mostly inhabited by indigenous Africans, with the slaves' descendants comprising five per cent of the population.

Liberia became notorious in the 1990s for its long-running, ruinous civil wars and its role in a rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

At least 250,000 people were killed in the civil wars, and many thousands more fled the fighting as the economy collapsed.

The war ended in 2003 and in 2005 voters in the country elected Africa's first female head of state, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf.

Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf, in a historic democratic transition of power since the end of the True Whig Party in 1980, handed over to Mr Weah in January 2018.