Democracy in Africa has had a rough few years, and the coming months look no better, with elections recycling scandal-tainted or elderly leaders – or both – instead of providing fresh alternatives.
Malawi went to the polls on 16 September, where the frontrunner is 85-year-old former president, Peter Mutharika. The aged politician, who served one term in office, had his 2019 re-election annulled after tally sheets were found to have been doctored with Tippex.
Further west, Cameroon votes on 12 October, with 92-year-old Paul Biya – Africa’s longest-serving president, in office since 1982 – set to extend his rule by another five years. This is despite rumours that he spends more time abroad for medical treatment than at home.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the incumbent 83-year-old Alassane Ouattara will seek a fourth term in office on 25 October. In 2020, he broke the two-term limit rule, which he justified with the “new constitution, new clock” argument.
What is going on?
Three decades after the third wave of democratisation normalised multiparty elections across Africa, its citizens were supposed to be living in a system based on accountability. Instead, many of the continent’s leaders brandish elections as a blunt tool to entrench power, making a mockery of a key democratic process.
Of course, this is hardly news. That multiparty democracy in Africa broadly has not been matched by institutional strength has been well documented since the mid-2000s.
But citizens are more fed up than ever before. This shows in the numbers: voter apathy has reached new highs in recent years. Barely half of eligible Kenyans voted in 2022, and turnout slid to 52% in Zimbabwe’s 2023 elections from 75% in 2018, 42% in South Africa in 2024 – among the lowest levels since the end of apartheid – and just 43% in Mozambique the same year. In Malawi, only 66% of eligible citizens were even registered to vote in 2025, almost the same as actual turnout in 2020.
It doesn’t help that outside the continent, elections are feeling hollow. According to US political advocacy non-profit Freedom House, in over 40 percent of national elections held in 2024, candidates were targeted with assassination attempts or assaults, polling places were attacked, or postelection protests were suppressed with disproportionate force. And even established democracies don’t inspire: the United States entered 2024 braced for a rematch between then-82-year-old Joe Biden and 79-year-old Donald Trump. Trump has also never been held accountable for the Capitol riots that saw his supporters storm Congress in January 2021.
The very real consequences
This mockery of the system by people in power isn’t just depressing political theatre. It carries consequences that ordinary citizens feel every day.
In Malawi, presidents focused on patronage over development have kept the country as one of the poorest in the world, where over 70% of citizens live on less than US$2.15 a day.
Political repression in Zimbabwe as ZANU-PF refuses to loosen its deadly grip on power has forced millions to flee since the early 2000s.
In Mozambique, years of intentional neglect in the northern province of Cabo Delgado by the ruling party have allowed an Islamist insurgency to fester, displacing nearly 600,000 people since 2017.
The appeal of strongmen
Paradoxically, it is these poor imitations of democracy that underpin arguments the system itself is ill suited for African contexts, as the blame for these socioeconomic ills shifts from bad governance onto democracy as an idea.
It explains why, for example, Burkina Faso’s military government can wrap its undemocratic rule in the language of renewal and be believed.
Its president, Ibrahim Traoré, a young army captain who seized power in 2022 and has since delayed elections indefinitely, has become a fixture on social media across Africa, where clips of his speeches and even fabricated success stories circulate as proof of an alternative.
It’s not the first time the continent has seen authoritarian fixes welcomed when democracy has become a farce.
Zimbabwe is a key example, when, in 2017, citizens were so desperate to see the back of long-term president Robert Mugabe that they celebrated when Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted him in a military coup.
A dangerous game
The danger of this kind of thinking is that it risks citizens stripping themselves of the only peaceful mechanism they have to demand change.
The harsh alternative to abandoning democratic norms is already on display: in Burkina Faso, the military junta has fought off a number of coup attempts and lost control of 70% of its territory to insurgents, while Zimbabwe has sunk deeper into depression under Mnangagwa. Neither of these experiments in renewal without democracy have delivered stability – only fresh waves of economic crises, violence, and displacement.
And for those who argue that countries should trade democracy for development, citizens across much of the continent are getting neither.
Kagame may provide stability at home in Rwanda, but he exports chaos abroad, by backing rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s troubled east.
Countries like Malawi may not face the same levels of violence as some of its neighbours, but decades of stalled development leave its citizens vulnerable to such, as in northern Mozambique – and it should be said that any governments’ repeated inability to realise basic socioeconomic rights for its population is a form of violence in itself.
The only way out is through
The way through this mess is for citizens across the continent to fight for the institutions that make democracy work – independent courts and commissions, and leaders who understand that legitimacy depends on accountability – as hollow as this may feel at this juncture.
Of course, telling people not to give up on democracy is easier said than done in countries where exposing wrongdoing gets people killed.
But showing up at elections – flawed as they may be – is one way to stand strong. Not only because low voter turnout benefits incumbents by stripping away a layer of pushback against their hold on power, but because when real turnout doesn’t match the official results, it becomes more difficult for politicians to hide their wrongdoing. Mozambique is a good example of this, when the ruling Mozambican Liberation Front’s (Frelimo’s) sweeping win in 2024 became its most blatant episode of fraud yet, leading it to concede parliamentary seats – even if this process was itself marred by inconsistencies.
For all its flaws, the system of democracy still offers the only path to accountability. In the United States, for example, Trump is under real pressure from the legislature to roll back tariffs he had applied unilaterally. The point is simple: only systems with checks and balances can compel leaders to change course. Africa needs more of that, not less.
Marisa Lourenço (@marisalourenco) is a political analyst based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her analysis on developments in Africa is regularly featured in local and international media. She currently works as an independent consultant advising organisations operating in the southern Africa subregion.
