Elections: A New Challenge for Africa?

The challenge of elections is not unique to Africa. For years, established democracies throughout the world have struggled with issues of access to power and elite decision-making. In Africa, however, these issues pose an additional challenge to the continent’s development.

People’s perceptions of Africa are changing every day. Once thought of as “the hopeless continent”, Africa is now increasingly seen as “the hopeful continent”. As Peter da Costa recently wrote on the APP’s blog, “Africa is the new frontier”. Yet, despite all the gains made, many people in Africa still live in very poor conditions.

At the APP’s recent expert consultation, Karuti Kanyinga, Director of South Consulting, said there is growing discourse that Africa’s problems, as well as the challenges ordinary people face on a daily basis, can be solved through democratic governance and accountability. According to Kanyinga, however, elections can also be a source of conflict and instability, and therefore an obstacle to development where safeguards are not adopted to ensure diverse representation. “Some elections conducted in the recent past,” he argued, “cannot pass the democratic test… Instead of stabilizing societies, they have made them more fragile.”

It is difficult to ignore Kanyinga’s words, especially if one takes into account what has been happening in Senegal lately. Ever since the country’s highest court controversially declared President Abdoulaye Wade eligible to run for a third term in this weekend’s presidential elections, Senegal has been rocked by demonstrations. This, together with increased incidents of police harassment and intimidation in recent months, has led some commentators to fear that the “Ivorian syndrome” might be looming in Senegal.

There is also growing concern over Zimbabwe, whose president of 32 years, Robert Mugabe, said in an interview this week that there will “definitely” be elections in the country this year, despite calls from the Prime Minister, the opposition party, the AU, as well as various human rights groups to postpone the elections until key constitutional reforms have been implemented.

With all this in mind, Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, points out that there is, nevertheless, evidence to suggest that where elections are held on a regular basis, leaders are usually more accountable and service delivery improves considerably. “Furthermore,” he says, “elections have provided citizens with a voice to express how they should be governed and the services they demand.”

What is it, then, about elections that can make them so problematic? There are several things that can negatively impact elections, such as electoral fraud and ineffective electoral systems and institutions, but both Kanyinga and Kimenyi argue that one of the most destructive aspects of elections is their influence on ethnic politics. Unfortunately, politicians the world over have often used ethnicity as a catalyst for political mobilization. This can have devastating consequences, as we have already seen. In order to counter this, it is important for people to discuss and settle on what a person requires to feel like a citizen in his/her country, as well as what it means to be a member of a political community, where both the individual and the state are obligated to respect their own and each other’s rights and duties.

With several important elections just around the corner, states must remember that in order to effectively address African development challenges, they must focus on responding to the needs and concerns of their citizens and not on leveraging divisive rhetoric for political gain.