Across Africa, elections trigger not only political contestation but also seismic shifts in public finance. While debates about democratic integrity often focus on electoral manipulation or institutional capture, far less attention has been paid to how election cycles distort fiscal policy and entrench unsustainable spending patterns. The result is a recurring political economy trap: as competition intensifies, incumbents wield public resources as political instruments, embedding electoral incentives directly into budgetary decisions.
What makes this moment urgent is not simply the rising costs of election administration but the way fiscal behaviour consistently bends to electoral timetables. Expansionary policy before the vote and sharp consolidation after it reflect the deep entanglement of political survival and macroeconomic management. Rather than insulating state finances from electoral pressures, weak institutional safeguards and politicised budgeting mechanisms actively amplify them.
In this article we explore how this “electoral fiscal complex” operates in practice – charting its costs, consequences and implications for democratic stability. It argues that unless political and budgetary calendars are disentangled, voters will continue to pay twice: once through pre-election spending sprees, and again through post-election austerity. Understanding this pattern is the first step towards breaking it.
Elections as Fiscal Earthquakes
Regional electoral frameworks and constitutions are clear about separating state from party and regulating campaign finance. Yet, the temptation for incumbents is obvious. When private money falls short, public budgets become campaign war chests. Elections are expensive everywhere. In Africa, per voter administrative costs are estimated at $4, double the global averages, with cumulative spending between 2000-2019 for Sub-Saharan Africa alone estimated at well above $100 billion.
Cost is only half the story. The deeper danger is how elections warp the structure of public finance. Across the region, the line between state and campaign resources blurs to invisibility. Government spending increases and fiscal tightening postponed during pre-election seasons. Projects and subsidies take on the hue of tokenised vote-buying. The shape of spending differs by context, but the rhythm is the same.
The IMF calls this phenomenon ‘election-year slippages’, a clinical phrase for a corrosive reality. It refers to the widening of budget deficits, inflationary pressures and unsustainable borrowing due to expansionary policies.
Across large cross-country samples, election years are associated with looser fiscal policy, with deficits about 0.3 percentage point of GDP higher than in non-election years. Ghana’s 2012 election year set the tone with double digits at 12% of GDP. By 2020 the gap widened to 15.2% and IMF warnings of pre-election loosening returned before the 2024 polls, echoing the 2012 and 2020 blowouts. In Kenya, ahead of the August 2022 elections, the Controller of Budget reported pressures to approve last minute payments totalling Ksh. 15.5 billion.
In Sierra Leone, the Auditor General was suspended amid disputes after highlighting fiscal risks ahead of the 2021 polls. Similar patterns of hiked wages, maize subsidies and rushed infrastructure or social programs clustered around campaign tours, with funding often faded after ballot was cast are documented in Uganda.
South Africa’s 2024 polls, the most competitive since 1994, also saw politically timed wage pressures and coalition-driven spending bargains. The October 2025 elections in Tanzania illustrate how political legitimacy and public finance are intertwined. As the country plunged into protests, military deployment and internet disruptions, markets reacted, donor confidence wavered and triggered concerns among development financiers already uneasy with opaque pre-election fiscal moves. This crisis underscores a core theme that election management is not politically neutral, and neither is its price tag.
But it doesn’t end there. The hangover is just as predictable as expansion gives way to austerity. Nigeria’s 2023/24 cycle ended with scrapping of fuel subsidies soon after inauguration, followed by a painful inflation surge. In Zambia, the 2021 vote was followed by an IMF programme, hard consolidation and years of unwinding arrears built up before the polls. These incidents highlight how fiscal abuses are being baked into the fiscal architecture.
They show how voters pay twice. First through pre-election expansionary fiscal policies that stoke deficits, then through post-election tightening that squeezes services.
Do Fiscal Rules Matter?
On paper, almost every African country has some form of fiscal rule meant to insulate budgets from political cycles. In practice, rules without referees are meaningless. This is not surprising. Evidence shows that where institutions are weak, the bite of fiscal rules fades over time. What makes this worse is that patronage is not just episodic, it is becoming structural.
Political bargains are struck around budgets and entire regions are told their development depends on loyalty to the ruling coalition. The rules become performative signals to lenders and credit agencies rather than binding constraints on political elites.
Institutional choices deepen this muddle. In July 2025, Kenya’s Parliament moved to entrench the National Government-Constituency Development Fund, National Government Affirmative Action Fund, alongside a new Senate Oversight Fund. Long criticised for weak accountability, these funds could gain constitutional status if assented to, cementing political control over public budgets.
In Nigeria, constituency projects have curdled into a slush pipeline, with the anti-corruption agency and civic monitors repeatedly uncovering inflated and ghost projects running into the billions of naira. Uganda adds a presidential twist. A campaign-trail “pledges” and donations are later absorbed into the State House budget with new initiatives launched on the eve of the 2021 cycle. These programs are subsequently dogged by under-absorption and audit red flags.
In Ghana, the ostensibly neutral District Assemblies Common Fund has long been steered by politics, with the formula and weights tweaked to favour pivotal districts and aligned areas. A pattern echoed in studies of partisan alignment and legislatures’ discretionary shares. Legislators who should provide oversight are increasingly direct implementers of projects, blurring separation of powers and entrenching conflicts of interest.
The 2024-2025 cycle echoed these patterns. Senegal’s pre-election standoff froze parts of the fiscal calendar, while Malawi’s mid-term budget adjustments ahead of the 2025 election signal familiar pressures.
Breaking the Electoral Fiscal Complex
Election-related fiscal volatility drags on long-term growth. Countries that curb election-year slippage hard-wire transparency and sever the budget from political parties through separation of powers. Democracy should discipline the budgets, not the other way around. The 2024 and 2025 events have made the stakes unmistakable. Until election calendars stop writing fiscal policy, these episodes will keep destabilising budgets.
Breaking this link is not about choosing between ballots and budgets but letting both work.
Darmi Jattani is an economist currently working as a Program Officer for Research and Evidence at Usawa Agenda.
Oscar Ochieng is a Communications Practitioner with BA in Sociology and Communications from the University of Nairobi.
