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Africa enters 2026 with elections scheduled in more than a dozen countries and with voter rolls that now exceed 600 million people across the continent. Elections have become the most common ritual of political life in Africa, more frequent than coups, civil wars, or constitutional rewrites. Yet frequency has not produced comfort. Voting has turned into a dual-use instrument: a tool for peaceful transfer of power in a minority of cases, and a method for laundering political capture in many others. It is a contradiction that now sits at the heart of what this year is likely to bring.
Uganda offers a useful example. Yoweri Museveni, the country’s president, secured another term, extending a rule that began in 1986. Official results awarded him almost three-quarters of the vote, despite urban districts breaking heavily for the opposition and youth unemployment hovering around 60 percent. Turnout slipped below 60 percent as security forces ring-fenced the process, curtailed opposition rallies, and intermittently restricted digital platforms. Uganda demonstrated how elections now function in many entrenched systems: a choreographed exercise that delivers continuity while preserving the appearance of democracy.
Similar dynamics will likely shape several of the other headline contests this year.
First, Benin is often cited as a reform success story of the 1990s. Today, it offers a perfect illustration of the “buy-in paradox.” President Patrice Talon is constitutionally barred from a third term, but the political field has been narrowed to the point where succession remains a controlled affair. Electoral laws passed since 2019 require parties to meet high national thresholds before fielding candidates, a rule that has sidelined most opposition groups. Parliamentary races since then have produced legislatures with over 80 percent pro-government seats.
Yet voters are still asked to participate, foreign observers invited, and results tabulated in public view. Opposition leaders face a puzzle: boycott and concede legitimacy or compete and validate a contest structured against them. Many will choose the latter, because absence guarantees irrelevance.
Second, Ethiopia’s general elections will be the most complex event on the calendar. The country has more than 120 million people, dozens of armed factions, and federal regions that are still operating under emergency regulations since the Tigray war. The 2021 polls were held in stages because of insecurity and logistical failure. In 2026, similar obstacles remain. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali retains national visibility, but his coalition is thinner than when he took office in 2018. Ethnic parties control large regional blocs, and voter registration in contested areas remains incomplete. The result may still produce a government with a parliamentary majority, but one whose mandate is geographically uneven and politically fragile.
Third, Somalia plans indirect elections again, relying on clan delegates rather than universal suffrage. Roughly 14,000 elders select members of parliament, who then choose the president. The system is defended as pragmatic in a country where Al-Shabab is steadily increasing the territory it controls.
Zambia and Gambia represent a rather different picture. Zambia’s 2021 election removed an incumbent through the ballot box for the third time since 1991. President Hakainde Hichilema enters 2026 with approval ratings near 60 percent, buoyed by debt restructuring, and the return of International Monetary Fund support. Inflation remains high, and youth job creation lags behind population growth, but institutions showed resilience in the last transfer of power.
Opposition movements face a strategic trap.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
Gambia, after ousting Yahya Jammeh in 2017, held a competitive vote in 2021 and is preparing for another. Turnout exceeded 80 percent, among the highest on the continent. Media pluralism has expanded, and civil society monitoring is now routine. Neither country is immune to backsliding, yet both demonstrate that electoral credibility can still compound over time.
Similarly, Cabo Verde, with a population under 600,000, continues to rank among Africa’s strongest performers on electoral integrity. Power has alternated peacefully multiple times since the 1990s, and voter turnout remains above 60 percent. Politics there is dull in the best sense, with arguments over budgets, ports, and tourism strategy rather than existential questions of who controls the state.
Across these cases runs the same thread: Elections are cheaper than repression and more acceptable to donors than open autocracy. Authoritarian incumbents have learned to keep polling stations open while closing political space. Over the past 15 years, average turnout in competitive African elections has fallen. At the same time, margins of victory for long-serving presidents have widened. Citizens show up less often, but winners win by more.
Meanwhile, opposition movements face a strategic trap. Mass boycotts rarely force reform. Participation confers legitimacy even when defeat is assured. Street protests can mobilize energy but invite forceful crackdowns or violent reprisals. Digital organizing expands reach but exposes activists to increasingly sophisticated surveillance.
Many parties now run not to win, but to remain visible, hoping demographic change will eventually tilt the field. Africa’s median age is 19.7. By 2035, voters under 35 will form a majority in almost every country on the continent. Incumbents understand this and increasingly invest in youth wings, social media campaigns, and cash-for-support programs tied to election seasons.
However, 2026 will not reverse the structural trend toward executive dominance. Ballots will legitimize power grabs in several states and ratify managed successions in others. Uganda has already shown how little suspense remains in systems where institutions bend early and often.
Yet the same year will also feature competitive races where outcomes are uncertain and where defeat remains possible. Africa’s electoral story is no longer a simple arc toward democracy or away from it. It is a crowded field of uneven experiments.
The deeper question is not whether Africans will keep voting. They will. It is whether elections will regain their original function as instruments of choice rather than rituals of consent. For now, the continent lives with both meanings at once.
- Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. X: @HafedAlGhwell