Elections In Africa Research Articles

Understanding the 2022 Kenyan presidential election outcome: insights from Key’s critical elections theory

ABSTRACT The ethnicisation of election and the concomitant diffusion of violence has been widely explored in the literature on Kenyan presidential elections. However, the critical character of the elections has been understudied, especially as it concerns the depth and intensity of involvement occasioned by the realignment of political actors. Oftentimes, this has resulted in the emergence of fundamental changes in power dynamics. This study drew insights from Key’s critical elections theory to analyse the 2022 Kenyan presidential election. Relying on primary and secondary sources, the study contends that the election exhibited critical characteristics owing to the economic crisis and the accompanying hardship on Kenyans, which united the poor electorate behind then-candidate William Ruto. The election revealed a sharp alteration in the pre-existing cleavage within the electorate and a profound readjustment in power relations as Key’s theory posited. This was amply demonstrated by Raila Odinga’s alliance with Uhuru Kenyatta, his old political foe, and Ruto’s populist campaign tenor – hustlers versus dynasties. We argue that the hustler narrative transcended primordial identity because it resonated with the poor electorate irrespective of their ethnicity. Therefore, it is the dynastic realignment and Ruto’s pro-poor campaign strategy that effectively set the tone for a critical election. We concluded that despite the seemingly subpar performance of President Ruto, he is still the candidate to beat in the 2027 presidential election if Odinga wins the African Union Chairmanship election in 2025. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on presidential elections in Africa.

(Un)leashed potentials: an activist-centered perspective on the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers in eastern DRC

ABSTRACT The re-emergence of competitive elections in Africa has sparked new interest in political mobilization on the continent. Much of this literature focusses on political actors and the strategies they use to mobilize. If the campaign activists are reviewed at all, they are often categorized by their ethnic or religious affiliation. Thereby, abilities and potentials for political participation, which are important within conceptual literature on political mobilization, are side-lined. This article uses an activist-centered perspective to review the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers, eastern Congo. Based on empirical research in 2020 and 2021, it evaluates the mobilization potentials of the so-called motards and their deployment during political action. The article finds that motards possess unique potentials for participating in political campaigns due to their mobility and large social networks but only partially deploy them. While their mobility potential is widely utilized, the mobilization of their social networks is hampered by a lack of allegiances and infrequent contacts with politicians. Based on the research findings, the article advocates expanding the perception of political mobilization in Africa by reflecting on the preconditions of mobilizability such as enabling potentials, interactions with activists and aligned political strategies.

The Nexus between Poverty and Elections in Africa: A Case Study of Somaliland and the Gambia

This article explores the states of democracy and the conduct of elections in Somaliland and the Gambia. The article examines the democratic and electoral institutions responsible for the conduct of elections in the two countries and assesses their level of effectiveness for a free and transparent election. The article uses multiple case studies as the research design to generate data on elections in Somaliland and the Gambia. Triangulation was also adopted as a method of obtaining multiple data to test their validity and relevance for this study. The study adopted content analysis as the technique for data analysis. The study found that the conduct of elections in both Somaliland and the Gambia has been influenced by vote buying which is the consequence of poverty. The study found that limited economic opportunities in both countries make citizen trade off their votes for favors during elections. The study recommends widening economic opportunities and strengthening the media and civil society organizations for civic education and capacity building of political parties and government officials.

Elections, Violence and Transitional Justice in Africa Elections, Violence and Transitional Justice in Africa. Edited by Elias O. Opongo and Tim Murithi. New York: Routledge, 2022. 202 pages. $127.50.

<i>Elections, Violence and Transitional Justice in Africa Elections, Violence and Transitional Justice in Africa</i>. Edited by Elias O. Opongo and Tim Murithi. New York: Routledge, 2022. 202 pages. $127.50.

Electoral Violence in Africa: An Analysis of Factors, Dimensions, Effects and Mitigating Factors

Elections are key elements of democratic processes. This article aims at providing reasons for election-related violence in Africa, their dimensions, effects, and mitigating factors. Elections are supposed to provide for a transparent and peaceful change of government, the distribution of power, and the promotion of democracy, but most elections in Africa are characterized by violence at various stages of the process. In war-torn countries and even in some stable African countries, incumbents are often manipulating or believed to be tampering with the electoral processes. The opposition parties also have incentives to further their strength through the use of violence. Such violence is potentially damaging democratic processes and undermining progress towards democratization. Electoral violence has varied causes, as highlighted in this article. Beyond direct effects such as hindering people from casting their vote and preventing candidates from participating in the electoral process, electoral violence can have long-term effects. Thus, managing election-related violence would build a strong, democratic, and peaceful society based on the rule of law, accountability, and transparency. Various strategies are used by different actors to achieve this. This article uses a qualitative research design. Information on the research is gathered purely from the review of scholarly articles and reports on the topic. The information presented is based on a synthesis of findings from these sources. From the synthesis of information from other reviews, we have in this article gathered and presented the main causes, effects, dimensions, and some mitigating factors of electoral violence in Africa.

IMPERATIVES OF AI TO THE CONDUCT OF A FREE, FAIR, AND CREDIBLE ELECTION IN AFRICA

The conduct of free, fair, and credible elections is the global benchmark for maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of electoral processes; however, this continues to be a significant challenge in Africa due to factors such as political instability, a lack of resources, and historical legacies of authoritarian rule. Although some African nations have deployed technologies such as the Biometric Voter Authentication System (BVAS) to assist minimize these issues, the challenges appear to be ubiquitous, prompting a need for the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to dramatically influence the conduct of free, fair, and credible elections in Africa by improving different facets of the electoral process. AI technology can help with voter registration, education, election monitoring, fraud detection, and result tabulation. Election management authorities and stakeholders may increase electoral transparency, efficiency, and accountability by utilizing AI technologies and algorithms. Using a mix-method approach, this paper examines how AI technologies can help to improve various aspects of the electoral process, such as voter registration and education, monitoring, fraud detection, and result tabulation, and concludes that AI has the potential to revolutionize election administration in Africa by increasing transparency, efficiency, and credibility. The use of artificial intelligence in guaranteeing free, fair, and trustworthy elections is critical to the continent's democratic process. Addressing election difficulties front on, African countries will strive to develop more democratic and accountable government institutions that represent their citizens' wishes.

The paradoxical image of democracy, votes, and elections in the selected African states

Voting and elections are regarded as quintessential democratic and policy behaviours. The problem with elections is that they do not fully mean democracy. The rationale behind the latter is that regular, free and fair elections do not provide for individual freedoms, political equality, empowerment, an independent civil society, a free press, or scope for deliberation-all key components of liberal democracy. Moreover, elections serve as a pivotal instrument designed to express and simultaneously reinforce the principles (representation, equality, and participation) on which democracy is founded. In democracy, communities exercise their voting rights to elect their representatives, who in turn hold the bureaucracy accountable for implementing decisions that affect the welfare of local communities. Looking at South Africa among African countries, the introduction of a democratic dispensation came with opportunities for the previously excluded citizens. Therefore, Section 195 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, emphasizes that 'people' needs must be responded to and the public must be encouraged to participate in policy making. The Paper seeks to give a comparison of democracy and elections in selected African countries. Often countries tend to practice elections and perceive democracy differently. This conceptual paper employed the use of a desktop study and has retrieved its basic contribution and argument from the existing literature on democracy and elections in Africa. Furthermore, the article discovered that in most cases citizens’ beliefs, preferences and behaviors change through political engagement, and further recommends that during voting campaigns and elections, a diversity of issues such as culture, beliefs, tradition, and individual preferences should be considered.

Constitution-building and safeguarding the integrity of elections in Africa

ABSTRACT This article explores the significance of constitution-building and its impact on electoral integrity in Africa. Over recent decades, numerous African countries have turned to constitution-building and revisions to enhance democracy. The role of constitutions has expanded beyond governing and regulating governance-citizen relationships; they are now crisis management tools. Ultimately, constitution-building emerges as a crucial mechanism to fortify electoral processes and democratic development, particularly within Africa. The article highlights key elements for constitution-building to strengthen electoral integrity.

Multi-ethnic vision or ethnic nationalism? The contested legacies of Anderson Mazoka and Zambia’s 2006 election

ABSTRACT Studies on elections in Africa’s multiparty democracies stress the role of “incumbency advantages” in the re-election of presidents. While this blanket explanation holds true for the most part, it does not cover the successes of incumbents in polls conducted with minimal levels of clientelism and manipulation. Using the example of Zambia’s 2006 election, this paper shows how incumbents in multi-ethnic societies attempt to build a winning coalition through effective appeals to ethnic inclusion. After the main opposition leader Anderson Mazoka died four months before the election, President Levy Mwanawasa appropriated Mazoka’s legacy as a politician committed to ethnic inclusion. He successfully presented himself in non-ethnic terms, accused his rivals of being tribalists and urged voters to reject them. Mwanawasa won over key sections of the opposition’s base and an election he was widely expected to lose, demonstrating the value of studying the role of individual political leadership in incumbent-party hegemony.

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The paper examined the contributions of party system to democratic development in Africa. Democratic governance and meaningful elections have long been considered unachievable in the absence of political parties and party competition. This is because party system institutionalization is important for the consolidation of democracy. Democracy instead of being the bedrock of good governance stayed on as an unfulfilled promise because the method of power acquisition remained basically authoritarian and functioned on the basis of a hierarchy of networks and alliances with local tribe, ethnic group or through top-down utter sovereignty of institutions that choke the grassroots politicization of society which had been the moral fibre of the process of democratization. To this end, it was discovered that the relationship between political parties, electoral volatility and democracy in Africa cannot be addressed unconnectedly. The paper therefore recommends that; assumptions about the trajectory and outcomes of democratic development in Africa need to be more effectively investigated on the basis of empirically informed analysis of operationalized politics in these systems. It is important to bear in mind that most of the electoral systems, laws, institutions and constitutions that govern elections in Africa were inherited from colonialism. Electoral politics came as a proposed solution to other socio-economic and political problems. This therefore calls for an amendment to these electoral processes in order to mirror the present realities in Africa as well as adhere to best practice as it is in developed democracies. It is contended that if an electoral system is to append value to democracy, it must promote the accountability of the elected representatives to their constituencies which could be furnished through strong political parties. The paper relied on secondary data using descriptive analytical method.

Overcoming challenges to the adjudication of election-related disputes at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights: Perspectives from the Ngandu case

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights is increasingly taking on the role of a regional electoral adjudication body in resolving election-related human rights violations. While this role is essential because of the contested nature of elections in Africa and the inability of many national election resolution mechanisms to sanction election irregularities, the African Commission must master the intricacies of election dispute resolution in member states for its recommendations to be based on sound legal principles. Its decision in the Ngandu case provides an opportunity to assess the nature of some of the challenges faced by the Commission when adjudicating election-related disputes and how to overcome these. In this decision, the African Commission found that the Democratic Republic of the Congo had violated the complainant's right to defence, to political participation and to work following the annulment of his election as a member of the National Assembly by the country's interim Constitutional Court (the Supreme Court of justice). The analysis of the case suggests that, despite the African Commission's ability to re-affirm the relevance of the right to political participation for the consolidation of democracy in Africa and protecting the right to a fair trial and to work, it must address three types of challenges in its role as election-adjudication body using the procedural mechanisms provided for in both the African Charter and the Rules of Procedure. These challenges are the knowledge of electoral justice systems operating in the DRC and Africa at large; the impossibility of restitution as a form of reparation; and the state's participation in proceedings and the implementation of recommendations.

The Challenges of Election Observation in Africa

Elections in Africa bring democracy to a close combative consciousness often because political offices hold financial luster and many engage in politics for the gains inherent in it. Arising from this, politicians show extreme urgency, interest and intensity to occupy offices. Electoral malpractices feed on this desperation with attendant conflict that follows elections. Aware of this and the drive to assist in attaining credible and fair elections, election observation groups put up some level of intervention to discourage elections manipulations. In Africa however, this process has faced a number of challenges. The need for this paper arises from the just concluded general elections in Nigeria and the challenges that the international observers faced. The primary source of this work therefore is through the observatory research methodology where participants are observed directly. Also studies of election observations in some selected African states are used as secondary source of engagements. Findings reveal that the challenges faced by international observers of African elections are both the reflections of the nature of politics in Africa and the observers’ political culture and orientation.

Social Media and Electoral Law Violation in Cameroon: The Case of the 2018 Presidential Election

Most presidential elections in Africa, especially in the central African sub-region have always ended up in some form of violence. Ever since the social media became a key tool in elections including those organize in African countries, it has been used as a platform to either decrease or escalate election violence, given its characteristics. The social media is not regulated, the law governing its use is difficult to enforce, everybody can create contents, it has a wider reach and it can be used to spread information instantly. The 2018 presidential election in Cameroon was marked by violence. The violence was blamed partly on the way the social media was used by different actors during the 2018 presidential election. This paper examines how the social media was used by actors of the election to violate the electoral code. The theoretical assumptions of this research are based on agenda setting which deals with the prioritization of stories or issues, their treatment and their place in the media. The paper used a quantitative research approach. A total of 176 questionnaires were distributed to voters. They were based in Douala and Buea. Key the findings reveal that social media was used to violate the electoral code during the 2018 election as 103 (58.5%) respondents received or read campaign messages before the official campaign. The findings equally reveal that the social media was used to spread fake news, and misinformation which played a role to incite and facilitate violence. The implication of this finding is that it will get election stakeholders to understand the dangers of the social media especially during elections and see what needs to be done to make the social media a better tool for election management.

Judicial Review and Presidential Elections in Africa

Judicial Review and Presidential Elections in Africa

Autocratisation, electoral politics and the limits of incumbency in African democracies

ABSTRACT The world is experiencing a new wave of autocratisation, characterised by a global democratic reversal. From 2010 to 2020, the share of the world population living in autocracies increased from 48 to 68%. Electoral autocracies are now the world's most common regime type, and along with closed autocracies they number 87 of the world's 195 states. Even during the height of the third wave of democratisation, elections in Africa rarely led to an alternation of power. Thirty years after the third wave, this special issue introduction takes stock of how many transfers of power occurred in the three crucial decades between 1991 and 2021. In this special issue, we focus on Zambia to understand some of the factors that contributed to an electoral turnover, notwithstanding the many benefits of incumbency that were enjoyed by the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) led by President Edgar Lungu. We show that the outcome of Zambia's August 2021 election demonstrates the limits of incumbency. We suggest that voters and opposition parties in countries with previous experiences of peaceful transfers of power might rely on a ‘democratic muscle-memory’, to dislodge autocrats and call for more research on when and why incumbents lose.

The 2021 municipal elections: rise of the volatile voter or disaffected citizen?

ABSTRACT South Africa's 2021 municipal elections present something of a paradox. The results suggested a highly competitive environment, especially in the urban metropoles, with an unprecedented number of hung councils where no single party was able secure 51 percent. The larger parties suffered losses while smaller parties made gains, suggesting voters had abandoned old political homes for new ones. In contrast, while previous local elections enjoyed modest but steady increases in participation, the 2021 municipal elections also witnessed a sharp decline in voter turnout. Less than a third of eligible voters participated. This paper argues that these paradoxical features are likely to remain a feature of South African electoral politics in the medium-term. While many who participated were likely to be volatile voters, switching their votes to a party different from previous choices, their participation was insufficient to compensate for a higher numbers of abstentions, which are a result of growing political system disaffection with electoral actors. These disaffected citizens are positioned at the periphery of politics and will be difficult to entice back to the polls, leaving the competitive aspect of South Africa's elections reliant on a diminishing number of engaged and unpredictable voters.

Biometric Technology Based Elections in Africa: The Way Forward

Biometric Technology Based Elections in Africa: The Way Forward

10 - Interrogating the Cost of Digital Technology and Trust in Elections in Africa: The Nigerian Perspective

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The adoption of technology in electoral democracy in Africa has been on the increase. The introduction of technology has its positive consideration but it also comes with cost and trust implications, which is a paradox. This study is a descriptive work which made use of both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Electionadministrationtheorywasadopted.Toimproveontheuseofdigital technologies, Africans should be mindful of the failure of digital checks and balances that often render an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. In designing new systems for election management, this article argues that Africans should look inward and integrate the new technologies into relevant environmental and cultural settings in order to reduce the cost while improving on the trust of electorates.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Felicia Osondu Okwueze, Department of Public Administration and Local Government, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Email: osondu.okwueze@unn.edu.ng&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Virtual issue: elections

ABSTRACT This virtual issue brings together articles posing important questions about the dynamics of elections in Africa to highlight a number of topics, including candidate selection, diaspora voting, democratic backsliding, and election violence.

The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa: Democracy, Voting and Virtue

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