In late 2024—after the global “year of elections” felled incumbent parties in four African countries and ended the ruling party’s 30-year majority in South Africa—end-of-year commentary about the state of democracy on the continent was brimming with cautious optimism. At the end of 2025, however, the mood was considerably gloomier. Elections in Malawi and Seychelles in September continued a wave of incumbent defeats. But highly lopsided results last year in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Tanzania, and Togo resembled coronations, rather than elections, where rulers sidelined opposition contenders and manipulated state institutions to secure victory.
On the face of it, these dual narratives reflect the mere fact that the slate of elections in 2024 featured an unusually high concentration of democracies, while 2025 had a heavier authoritarian tilt. But the crude comparison sheds light on how democratic trajectories on the continent are loosely following three different pathways. Historically democratic states are becoming increasingly politically volatile as mounting popular discontent with rising living costs, corruption, and uneven governance erodes longstanding incumbency advantages. At the same time, deeply entrenched autocracies are removing even the veneer of electoral competition. Meanwhile, a handful of states are experimenting with a third path as citizens back military rule.
Trajectory 1: African Democracies Facing Anti-Incumbency Wave
The lesson from recent opposition wins in Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Senegal, and Seychelles is that incumbents—at least in African democracies—are in trouble. These countries share two main features. First, they all have a history of free and fair elections and a relatively open political space. Second, they appear to reflect a deep reservoir of mounting anti-incumbent sentiment that has become more pronounced in the past 15 years.
From 1996 to 2010, candidates from the incumbent party won roughly 84 per cent of all African elections where the chief executive was at stake. Since 2010, this has dropped to 73 per cent.[1] In democracies, the decline is more dramatic. Using a dichotomous cutoff between democracy and autocracy proposed by researchers using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset[2], I find that, in African democracies, incumbents won 76 per cent of elections between 1995 and 2010, but only 59 per cent since 2010 (and 55 per cent since 2021). This change casts doubt on the view, expressed as recently as 2019, that “incumbents seem to get reelected regardless of their performance in power.”
There could be several reasons for this drop, such as a shrinking number of democracies or country-specific idiosyncrasies. But it seems no coincidence that the trend corresponds with rising popular disillusionment with the ability of African governments to deliver on promises. This is well-documented in Afrobarometer surveys, which show year-over-year declines in public satisfaction with living standards, the state of democracy, and state institutions, like courts and electoral bodies. Recent one-term presidencies (previously a rarity) in Botswana, Liberia, Malawi, and Seychelles suggest voters are quickly losing patience with their leaders and are not afraid to cast them out after only a few years in power. In short, in countries with civic freedoms and democratic elections, the publics are increasingly punishing incumbents at the ballot box.
Trajectory 2: African Autocracies Taking the Gloves Off
The story is different in entrenched autocracies, which are also facing publics agitating for change, but retaliating with repression. In 2025, autocrats in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Tanzania excluded key opposition figures and ran up the score in elections to secure their rule. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, for example, allegedly won nearly 98% of the vote in October’s election, exceeding even the vote share earned by presidents when Tanzania was a one-party state in the 1960s-80s.
Some states, like Tanzania, Togo, or Zimbabwe — where the opposition used to pose a credible electoral threat — are seeing even the illusion of democracy fade. Since May, for instance, Chad’s President has locked up his primary opponent and pushed through constitutional changes that would, in effect, allow him to serve as president-for-life. What most of these states have in common, unlike those in the first group, is that they have little to no history of electoral turnover. These longstanding autocracies adapted to domestic and international pressure for democratisation after the Cold War, and now that some of that pressure has waned, they are taking steps to ensure elections more closely resemble pro forma coronations than real competitions.
Trajectory 3: Military Rule as an Alternative?
A handful of states have taken a third path: long-term military rule. While coups have long been a fixture of African politics, most military regimes since the end of the Cold War have returned power to civilians within a few years. But the juntas that took power in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger between 2020 and 2023 show little interest in elections or ceding power — yet they remain strikingly popular. Even as the juntas have largely failed to improve day-to-day governance, they have exploited popular discontent with past civilian governments, aggressively proclaimed themselves pan-Africanists and guardians of sovereignty, and leaned on one another to justify their rule.
Other military rulers, like those in Guinea-Bissau and Madagascar, may lack the same advantages enjoyed by the Sahelian juntas, such as popular solidarity in the face of perceived foreign interference. But there is also evidence of a broader allure of the military strongman. Afrobarometer polling across 30 countries suggests opposition to military rule has dropped by more than 11 percent since 2011, and a majority of respondents claim they would be willing to accept military takeovers if elected leaders “abuse power for their own ends.” In the course of my PhD fieldwork in Uganda in 2024, I found (albeit anecdotally) that 1970s military dictator Idi Amin—despite his storied reputation for brutality—was strikingly popular among many everyday citizens in today’s Kampala.
Outlook for the Continent
Countries are not necessarily fated to follow one of these three trajectories. If democracies do not show improvements in governance, for example, they too could eventually succumb to military rule. Juntas also have a tendency to self-cannibalise, making possible an eventual return to the Sahel’s once-vibrant politics and civil society.
However, the three tracks are rooted in part in historical trajectories—including “fragments of democracy” that survived the Cold War, divergences during the return of multipartyism in the early 1990s, and popular nostalgia for past episodes of military rule—that contribute to their durability. Together, these tracks explain why a similar shock—growing popular agitation across Africa for political change—is manifesting differently across the continent, defying easy classification. Democracy in Africa is neither fully on the march nor on an inevitable path to demise—and absent a structural shift, it may stay that way in the years to come.
Andrew Wojtanik is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California-Berkeley, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, and an analyst in the US Government. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
