Voters were busy across the globe in 2024 and more than a dozen countries in Africa staged presidential, parliamentary or local elections.
While some of Africa’s longtime dominant ruling parties retained power, in others, incumbents went down in surprising and crushing defeats.
Southern Africa
The small archipelago of Comoros — off Africa’s east coast — was the first to host presidential elections in 2024. Incumbent President Azali Assoumani, a former military officer who first came to power in a coup in 1999, won a fourth term.
Election results were immediately rejected by the opposition, triggering violent protests that killed one and injured 25.
In Mozambique, the Frelimo party won general elections again, extending its nearly 50 years in power. The official results were immediately rejected by opposition leader and runner-up Venancio Mondlane, triggering violent protests in the southern African country.
Many analysts, including Maputo’s Center for Democracy and Human Rights’ Director Adriano Nuvunga, predicted a Frelimo win despite heavy youth support for Mondlane.
“The terrain is already prepared, regardless of what we see — the enthusiasm, dynamism of the young people that are rallying behind this opposition candidate,” Nuvunga told VOA.
American University’s Kwaku Nuamah hopes President Daniel Chapo of Frelimo can extend an olive branch to the opposition to avoid a prolonged conflict in Mozambique. “When you win, you have the responsibility to unite the country. Hopefully, he’s able to do that… We don’t need another African country going down in flames,” Nuamah told VOA.
Similarly, Namibia’s ruling party SWAPO retained power after many decades of governance but made history by electing its first female president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
Her main challenger, however, called the elections flawed, after multiple examples of election day technical difficulties and ballot paper shortages were documented.
Unlike Mozambique, Comoros, and Namibia, Botswana ushered in a new era by electing a leader from the opposition for the first time in nearly 60 years, following decades of rule by one party.
“Let’s carry those who came before us, those we have today and those who will come after us, to greater heights,” Duma Gideon Boko addressing supporters at his swearing-in ceremony.
Elections were peaceful in neighboring South Africa, but the outcome predicted by some surprised many. The African National Congress, in power since 1994 — when Nelson Mandela was elected president following the end of apartheid — failed to win the elections with an outright majority, forcing it for the first time to form a coalition government.
Simphiwe Malambo, an architect in South Africa. welcomed the change telling VOA “The ANC is finally going to be in a position where they have to reconsider how they’ve been approaching running the country.”
While ANC leaders asserted the country made progress under its stewardship, many voters expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s failure to deliver reliable electricity and other services. Allegations of corruption and disunity within the party played a role in the ANC’s ability to win a majority.
“[Former President] Jacob Zuma’s party Mkhonto We Sizwe or MK has been completely unexpected. It arrived on the scene quite late in the run up to the elections and completely scrambled everything,” Daryl Glaser, University of Witwatersrand in South Africa told VOA a few days before the vote took place.
East Africa
In Rwanda’s elections, President Paul Kagame, in power for 30 years, won almost 100% of the vote. Some analysts credit Kagame for bringing peace, unity, and economic development to Rwanda after the country’s 1994 genocide.
“Voters want a leader who provides solutions for them… The achievement is tangible. You can see it,” analyst Teddy Kaberuka tells VOA.
But others like Strathmore University professor Edgar Githua question his popularity within the country.
“If you have a vote where 98% of a population vote for one candidate, that is a red flag. Nobody is that popular in this world,” he said.
A 2022 Human Rights Watch report said the space for political opposition and free media remained closed in the east African country.
West Africa
In West Africa, where a wave of coups recently dominated the political landscape, two countries seen as beacons of democracy didn’t disappoint.
In Ghana, after serving only one term about a decade ago, President John Mahama made a stunning comeback in 2024 and beat the country’s ruling party candidate and Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
University of Ghana’s senior lecturer Kwame Asah-Asante told VOA that many voters in the country were thinking about the economy and their financial situations when they cast ballots because “it’s a bread-and-butter issue. We’ve seen time and again that anytime you have a very difficult economy, campaigning becomes difficult for the government of the day,” he said.
Ghana is the second largest cocoa producer in the world, but the country defaulted on most of its $30 billion external debt in 2022 after the effects of years of borrowing were made worse by the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mahama vows to cultivate a 24-hour business environment — enabling businesses and public institutions to operate 24/7, in three shifts of eight hours each — to bolster job creation and improve the economy.
In Senegal, little-known opposition leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, became Africa’s youngest president. Faye promised to fight corruption, rebuild institutions, and unite the country.
His election victory — just a few weeks after getting out of prison — followed a failed attempt by outgoing President Macky Sall to postpone the election process, plunging the country into a brief political crisis.
“It was very interesting, very educational scenario for those who are learning about democracy,” analyst Kaberuka told VOA about the Senegal vote.
Sahel region
While elections went on as planned in most African nations, they’ve been postponed in others including the ones plagued by coups in the Sahel, signaling military juntas’ intention to stay in power, analysts warn.
Elections were officially postponed in Mali and Burkina Faso and Niger’s junta spoke of a three-year transition.
According to the 2024 rankings on media freedom by Reporters Without Borders, already-high restrictions on access to information increased in the Sahel, where several countries suspended local retransmissions of foreign broadcast media.
