JUNE 2025
Africa’s Complicated
Democratic Landscape
By Cameron Hudson, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, and Khasai Makhulo.
N
arratives around the state of democracy in Africa tend to swing between exuberant optimism
and gloomy pessimism. Recent electoral outcomes across the continent, however, reveal a
more nuanced reality that dees easy characterization. In what some analysts have seen as
part of a global “anti-incumbent election wave,” 2024 saw opposition parties achieve remarkable
victories across several African nations with relatively robust democratic institutions, suggesting a
vibrant and resilient demand for democracy. For example, the Botswana Democratic Party lost its
parliamentary majority after 58 years of uninterrupted rule. South Africa’s African National Congress
fell below majority status for the rst time since the end of apartheid in 1994, forcing it into a coalition
government. Similarly, opposition victories in Senegal, Ghana, Somaliland, and Mauritius all
signaled a broader trend of both electoral accountability and dissatisfaction with the status quo.
These outcomes reect several connected factors: widespread economic discontent exacerbated by
slow post-pandemic recoveries, as well as by rising global ination related to ongoing wars in Europe
and the Middle East; local perceptions of corruption and governance failures; demographic shifts, with
younger voters less tied to liberation narratives and more motivated by their own diminished prospects;
and—perhaps most signicantly—the presence of independent judiciaries and electoral commissions, free
media, and active civil societies that have helped translate public discontent into peaceful political action.
But the enthusiasm around these peaceful transitions is tempered by several less desirable electoral
outcomes, which suggest that in places where democratic traditions have been slow to take root—such
as Mozambique, Chad, and Comoros—it remains dicult to challenge embedded incumbents and
overcome the capture of state institutions. For example, the deeply entrenched Mozambique Liberation
Front (FRELIMO) was able to undermine what was hoped to be a competitive election, instead
extending its nearly 50-year hold on power in a process marred by widespread allegations of fraud that
sparked violent unrest. Similarly, violence erupted in the lead up to Chad’s presidential vote, with the
leading opposition candidate being killed in a stando with federal forces earlier in the year; President
