African Elections Matter in 2023

             For more than two decades now, Americans have held polarized views about the integrity and accuracy of votes in our national elections. As someone who once taught African election observers and African political parties, this was embarrassing early on. I recall hosting a Nigerian delegation in Florida in 2002 where participants asked to see the infamous “hanging chads” from the 2000 elections. My colleagues and I took pride in our training in Africa to emphasize that in our country, losing parties tried to learn from their losses and move on to their next opportunity to win.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. American elections routinely seem to devolve into recriminations and court challenges. We would find ourselves in a precarious position these days preaching such sanctimonious sentiments about the acceptance of our election results. In 2023, there are key elections in Africa, and one hopes our government can focus on providing genuine assistance in cases where these electoral contests affect our government’s policy toward certain African countries and the potential for commercial success by U.S. businesses.

First up in February is Nigeria. We have become accustomed to turmoil in the continent’s most populous nation and major global oil producer, but human rights violations have resulted in U.S. sanctions that limit what can be done through assistance to the government. This nation, which was cobbled together from various ethnic elements that have never meshed harmoniously, with an underlying aggressive religious competition between Christians and Muslims that always seems on the brink of pervasive social upheaval. The widespread killing of Christians by Muslim extremists in recent years has made this nation a model of religious intolerance. Terrorist activity by Boko Haram has spread to surrounding nations, posing a regional threat beyond Nigeria’s borders.

The Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All-People’s Party’s Bola Tinubu has caused concern, even though it is not the first all-Muslin ticket in Nigeria’s history. Under the current conditions, it is seen as a poor signal for any future efforts to end religious strife in the country, in addition to questions about corrupt practices. The People’s Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar has tried and failed before to win Nigeria’s presidency and has been accused of corruption that has touched elements in the United States. The Liberal Party’s Peter Obi, a less suspect candidate seemingly rising in the polls of late, continues to be given little chance of winning.

As if the longstanding antipathy between supporters of APP and PDP isn’t of enough concern, should Obi’s campaign pick up even more steam, it would greatly upset the supporters of his rivals, who see this as a two-party race as usual in recent elections. Nigeria’s election commission has issued a warning that the February 27 polling could be postponed if current and anticipated increased violence is not brought under control. That would be a prudent move but wouldn’t alleviate future concerns as there would be no realistic expectations of a cooling off period to make voting safer.

Sudan’s election in July could bring this long-troubled nation back into stable governance – or not. Last October’s military coup ushered in a “transitional government” that is supposed to be replaced by an elected government this year. Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok was one of several top government officials arrested and held in custody by the military before Hamdok was released to resume his position, but he resigned a year ago following violent protests that left a reported 55 persons dead. While the military seized control of the transition process, coup leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan promised that neither the military nor security forces would re-enter the political process.

However, there are significant questions about the independence of the country’s electoral authorities, which are critical to ensuring integrity of the balloting. The military seized power because of its stated concerns about corruption. If there are credible, or even plausible, questions about the election this year, would the military intervene again to ostensibly safeguard the interests of voters?

The United States and the rest of the international would prefer this country with its critical energy resources could become stabilized and brought back into the community of nations and end the constant cycle of human rights violations that have plagued the country for decades.

Liberia’s October elections will be a test of the people’s tolerance for a laissez faire government where President George Weah left the country for several weeks during various economic crises in the country. He has failed to improve conditions for his people as promised. Liberia is a country long bedeviled by corruption, but despite a pledge to abide by a code of conduct that requires government officials to declare their assets, including issuing basic financial statements, Weah’s government has routinely ignored this agreement.

This country was once critical to intelligence gathering in West Africa before the friendly Tolbert regime was overthrown in 1980. Since then, relations have been up and down. Charles Taylor was seen as a disaster for Liberia and the United States, while Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was considered admirable despite persistent corruption in the country, and she successfully steered the country through the Ebola crisis.

Liberians consider the United States the “mother country” because it was officially founded as a nation in 1847 by freed slaves returned from America, even though these “Americo-Liberians” did not mesh well with the indigenous people. The Liberian Diaspora in the United States is beginning to exercise its previously tepid political influence. Americans still don’t see Liberia as special among African nations, but that could change with more activism by Liberians in this country and an election that demonstrates an awakened citizenry desiring good governance and progress for their people. The hundreds of Liberians who gathered just outside the capital city of Monrovia in December signaled the desire for change.

The December elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is seen as a critical stage in that country’s evolution to stable democracy. The United States, the United Nations and other elements of the international community are placing a great deal of hope on transparent and effective elections in DRC. Since President Felix Tshisekedi came to power in January 2019 in the country’s first peaceful handover of power, the U.S. government and others have made every effort to be supportive. In the case of the United States, DRC’s benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act were restored based on the promise of reform even before reforms were implemented.

DRC is an important country sitting in the middle of Africa, bordered by nine neighbors. It also contains vital minerals resources required by the modern world, including cobalt, rare earth minerals used in renewable energy equipment and elements such as tin, tantalum and tungsten used in cellphones and computers. Stability in DRC is critical to the region, not only because of its natural resources, but also because of the overflow of conflict into neighboring countries and the bleeding of their conflicts into DRC. This led to the conflicts known as the First and Second Congo Wars in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A repeat of these conflicts could be even more disastrous today that it was two decades ago.

My choice of elections to highlight doesn’t mean I don’t consider the June Sierra Leone elections or the October/November Mali elections important for those countries and the West Africa region. Nor do I believe the importance of unconfirmed 2023 elections in Gabor, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, South Sudan and Zimbabwe are not important.

In fact, a lot is riding on the Zimbabwe elections as regards U.S-Zimbabwe relations. There are longstanding U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe. In September of last year, U.S. officials pledged to maintain sanctions on Zimbabwe despite a plea for their removal by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during his meeting with President Biden. The Biden Administration has called on the government of Emerson Mnangagwa to prosecute former and current regime officials responsible for corruption and human rights abuses and build back its democracy. A large part of any decision to normalize relations with Zimbabwe will be the successful, acceptable conduct of its elections – whether held in 2023 or 2024.

The United States must support Africa electoral process from their inception – from the establishment of electoral authorities and election and post-election rules to delimitation of constituencies to voter, party and candidate registration to voter, election observer and election official training to the creation and distribution of ballots and other electoral implements to the staffing and equipping of polling places and vote counting centers.

Elections everywhere are complex and costly. Getting it right the first time is critical. Voters – largely poor people – are seriously inconvenienced by repeated balloting. Moreover, errors and deliberate obstacles diminish the necessary confidence in the electoral process, and that confidence is difficult to restore, as we’ve seen here in the United States. Re-runs of elections are not always financially or logistically feasible.

Additionally, putting together coalition governments to paper over election problems is not a sustainable solution as we’ve seen in Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. So, one hopes the United States and the international community has done or will do all that is possible to enable these 2023 elections in Africa to be as successful as possible. African elections very much matter to the world and must be taken very seriously.