SPECIAL ELECTION YEAR LAYOUT
Following its “year of elections” in 2024, when 19 African countries were slated to hold elections to select their head of state, Africa’s roster of 2025 elections is more modest, with 10 polls on tap.
Credibility will be a key theme for this year’s elections, with half of the planned polls shaping up to be highly orchestrated processes with the predictable outcome of a victorious incumbent. This, in fact, has been a recurring theme in recent years. Of the elections planned last year, five were not even held, due to the incumbents’ sense of impunity to uphold democratic institutions and the rule of law.
Credibility will be a key theme for this year’s elections, with half of the planned polls shaping up to be highly orchestrated processes
The limited credibility of some of these electoral processes is not occurring in isolation but rather is part of a concerted effort by certain incumbents or ruling parties to further insulate themselves from the public will—and popular accountability. This is effected through an increasingly shrewd series of tactics including term limit evasions, extending presidential terms, weakening of constitutional courts, and usurping the independence of election management bodies, among other means of eroding democratic checks and balances.
A preponderance of this year’s elections will be in Francophone countries with seven of the ten occurring in West and Central Africa—the epicenter of Russian influence operations to undermine democracy on the continent.
An imperative for policymakers, journalists, and analysts will be to apply a sufficiently sophisticated lens in interpreting these electoral processes.
An imperative for policymakers, journalists, and analysts will be to apply a sufficiently sophisticated lens in interpreting these electoral processes. These analyses will need to differentiate between genuinely competitive elections where citizens can freely express themselves and those electoral exercises that employ the trappings of an election but where actual participation—and thus the outcome—are tightly controlled. Absent such differentiations, there will be limited incentives for incumbents to do more than go through the motions. At stake is the bar for democratic norms on the continent.
For countries with competitive elections, the process will provide an occasion for the public to validate their support for the direction of the country—as well as the opportunity for democratic self-correction and renewal.
All but two of the planned 2025 elections fall in the final third of the year, leading to a busy end of year election season. The long lead up will provide an opportunity to further scrutinize the issues driving each election—and their implications for democratic development.
Following are key issues to watch.