An Overview of Selected African Elections in 2024

Written by James Croll; Edited by Ava Holtzman

Published on March 14th, 2024

A woman voting in the 2016 Ghana election. (Photo: USAID)

In 2024, the global political landscape is marked by pivotal elections, including the anticipated rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the United Kingdom's general election, and India's general election. Africa is also hosting a number of elections this year, which will likely play a seminal role in shaping regional and international politics. Let’s take a closer look at three of the most important elections happening this year on the continent: Elections in Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa.

A voter casts his ballot at a polling station in Accra, Ghana, Monday, Dec. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Ofoe Amegavie)

Ghana

A campaign billboard shows John Dramani Mahama, Ghana's president and National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate Nana Addo on a street in Accra December 3, 2016. REUTERS/Luc GnagoReuters

The Ghanaian Presidential Election is scheduled to take place on December 7th, 2024. The incumbent President, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is term-limited and ineligible to run for reelection. Ghana is a prime example of successful African democracy, with this upcoming election likely serving as the fifth consecutive peaceful presidential succession since the formation of the Ghanaian Fourth Republic in 1992. There are two main political parties in Ghana: the NPP as mentioned above and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The market-oriented center-right NPP is associated with the Akans, Ghana’s largest ethnolinguistic group with over 47% of the country’s population (including the prominent Ashanti and Akim subgroups). This party has enjoyed great electoral success in Southern Ghana with most of its base in Ashanti and Eastern Provinces. Meanwhile, the economically populist and center-left NDC is heavily associated with the Ewe ethnic subgroup of its founder, former President John Rawlings. This group enjoys the support of the Volta Region, along with many smaller ethnic groups in northern Ghana. While ethnicity plays a major role in the makeup of the two main Ghanaian political parties, there are also demographic factors at play; the NPP tends to attract well-educated, wealthy urban voters while the NDC appeals to less-educated, economically disadvantaged rural voters.

In Ghana, presidential elections are held every four years in a two-round system (if no candidate reaches 50% of the vote in the first round of voting, then the top two candidates enter a runoff election). The two major candidates for the 2024 elections are Vice President Mamamudu Bawumia of the NPP and Former President John Mahama of the NDC. Bawumia, the current Vice President of Ghana, serving alongside President Akufo-Addo, was former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ghana and has run alongside Akufo-Addo in every election since 2008. His opponent is John Mahama, former President of Ghana from 2012-2017 (ascending from the position of vice president after the death of President John Attah Mills in office). He was replaced by the current President after narrowly losing reelection the previous year. Mahama is a Christian from the Northwest of Ghana, who says he was inspired to join politics after the death of Ghanaian political icon and Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah in the 1960s. There are two other less popular notable candidates in the race: Alan John Kyerematen, former NPP Minister under President John Kuofor’s administration in the 2000s, has split from his former party and established the Movement for Change to back his presidential campaign. The other candidate, Nana Kwame Bediako (also known as Cheddar) gained notoriety for appearing as a masked figure on billboards around the country announcing a run for president under the New Force Party. This election is expected to be highly competitive between Bawumia and Mahama just like the previous presidential contests with several pertinent issues defining the political battlefield. Due to factors such as the COVID pandemic, the disruption of grain and other supply networks from the Russia-Ukraine War, and financial irresponsibility, Ghana has faced massive inflation that has required an emergency $3 billion dollar IMF bailout, which has been a large point of attack against the incumbent NPP.

Graph of Ghana’s national inflation percentage measured month-to month.

Additionally, violent extremist organizations in the Sahel have grown in both power and lethality, sparking fears of violence spilling into Ghana through its northern border with Burkina Faso. Government officials have been forced to be proactive and engage with border communities to counter anti-government messaging spread by these organizations. Finally, the 2023 coups and subsequent suspension of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS (the economic and political cooperation agreement between West African nations) has put additional stress on the Ghanaian leadership to protect their citizens from external pressures and maintain their status as one of the most democratic and equitable states in the region. It is too early for high-quality polls, but the evidence suggests that the various economic and political factors will put the NPP on the defensive (not to mention the siphoning of voters from former NPP politician Kyerematen’s candidacy). Ghanaians are already intimately familiar with both candidates and their policies, so time will tell whether they choose to extend the rule of the NPP or allow Mahama to return to his former position as President of Ghana.

Senegal

Senegal will be electing its next President on March 24, 2024. Senegal has served as a shining example of a successful West African democracy, as the country is the only West African nation never to suffer a coup d'etat since gaining independence in 1960 and one of the few African nations to have peaceful transitions of power since the early 1990s. However, this cycle, that tradition came dangerously close to being broken by outgoing incumbent President Macky Sall of the Alliance for the Republic Party (APR). The presidential election, originally scheduled for the 25th of February of this year, was indefinitely postponed by presidential decree on February 3rd. This sparked public outrage, with protestors and prominent political opposition figures accusing Sall of acting in a dictatorial and self-interested way to extend his term of office and initiating a “soft coup” against Senegal and its democratic norms. Sall relented after a month of violent protests, political chaos, and the resignation of several prominent leadership figures in his party, setting the new date of the first round of the election on March 24th. These events occurred only a month after the Senegalese Constitution Council barred over 25 major opposition candidates from running for President.

HO, Senegalese presidential office, AFP | Handout photo distributed by the Senegalese Presidential Press Office shows Senegalese President Macky Sall preparing to make a televised speech, on February 16, 2016.

Some of the prominent candidates banned include Karim Wade, a former minister and son of former President Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012) and Ousmane Sonko, leader of the opposition and one of the most controversial political figures in the nation. Originally a tax collector, Sonko gained notoriety in Senegal for acting as a whistle-blower against offshore tax-havens. In 2018, Sonko published Solutions, a political manifesto in which he called for transformative reform of the Senegalese political and civil societies including a call to replace the franc with a new domestic currency. He contested the 2019 Presidential election, placing third with 16% compared to Sall’s dominant 58% re-election victory. In 2021, Sonko founded the current major opposition coalition known as Yewwi Askan Wi (YAW or Free the People in English), which experienced sizable electoral victory in the 2022 local elections and was one seat away from a majority within the National Assembly. However, Sonko was detained in early 2021 due to sexual assault allegations, leading to mass protests across the nation claiming that the charges were politically motivated. In 2023, Sonko was again accused of “disturbing the public order” and “corrupting youth,” sentencing him in absentia to two years of imprisonment which led to mass protests and chaos due to the implication that he would be barred from contesting the upcoming election. A great deal of the current political strife in Senegal is between allies of President Sall’s faction and those in Sonko’s faction establishing the foundation for the battlefield of the 2024 elections in which neither political figure is running.

Opposition leaders from left to right: Dethie Fall, Ousmane Sonko, Aida Mbodji et Khalifa Sall/ Africa News

President Sall, initially elected in 2012, is the leader of the Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY or United in Hope in English) parliamentary coalition and leader of the Alliance for the Republic Party (APR). The BBY is known for its liberal policy and focus towards serving Western business interests, but in recent years has become increasingly known for rampant corruption and public sector graft. Sall’s chosen successor is Amadou Ba, the current prime minister with history as a financial and foreign minister picked to serve as a unifying candidate for the APR. The major opposition coalition founded by Sonko, Liberate the People, is comprised of PASTEF (Sonko’s party which was banned when he was convicted), and a number of smaller parties including Manko Taxawu Senegal, led by former Mayor of Dakar (from 2009-2019) Khalifa Ababacar Sall. Sall has been an outspoken opponent of President Macky Sall (no relation) and the BBY coalition, prompting the YAW to select him as their chosen candidate for the 2024 elections due to the removal of Sonko and Wade from the ballot. Former Mayor Sall was sentenced to five years in jail in 2018 for embezzlement of funds, preventing him from contesting the February 2019 election, but he was later pardoned by President Sall after demonstrating that the conviction was likely to remove a prominent political opponent from the ballot. 

Additionally, Wallu Senegal, the alliance led by the now 97-year old former President Abdoulaye Wade, entered an alliance with the YAW to form a majority after the results of the 2022 election.  The third main candidate in the upcoming election is Idrissa Seck, a former protege of President Wade who grew disillusioned with his party before founding his own known as Rewmi (Wolof for “the country”). Seck ran against his former mentor in 2012, endorsing President Seck in the runoff against Wade, and ran again in 2019, coming in second place with just above 20% of the vote. Seck has spoken out against President Sall in recent months, advocating for Ousmane Sonko’s right to stand as a candidate and coming out in favor of Sall not running for reelection. In addition to the political chaos, the three presidential candidates must deal with the major economic crisis Senegal faces along with many other African nations; high inflation and food prices have greatly increased the cost of living leading to a majority of Senegalese to be unhappy with their government’s handling of the economy. Additionally, the recent political turmoil has likely undermined support for the ruling BBY coalition, with polls suggesting only 60% of Sall’s 2019 voters are planning to vote for the BBY’s candidate Amadou Ba in this upcoming election. However, it isn’t all bad news: Senegal is planning to launch oil and gas production later this year, the administration of which has been of great debate between the candidates. While there isn’t reliable polling data for this election yet, the momentum against the incumbent coalition alongside the popular support for Ousmane Sonko’s oppositionist politics may very well result in the fall of the BBY from their decade-plus long control of the Senegalese presidency.

South Africa

Members of the African National Congress gather at Luthuli House in Johannesburg on January 25, 2023. Photographer: MARCO LONGARI/AFP

The South African general election of a new National Assembly and President is scheduled for May 29th, 2024. The governmental structure of South Africa is unique, as the parliamentary legislature in the National Assembly directly elects the President through majority vote (who serves as head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief). Since the abolition of Apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has had thirty years of an uninterrupted majority in the National Assembly, with civil-rights and anti-Apartheid activist Nelson Mandela serving as the first President through most of the 1990s. After Mandela came Thabo Mbeki, his handpicked successor and another ANC anti-apartheid advocate in the years leading up to the abolition of the practice. Mbeki served almost two full terms before being ousted by the leadership of the ANC due to allegations of improper interference in the state prosecution of Jacob Zuma, his deputy president who was charged with corruption in a highly publicized trial in 2006. Zuma led Mbeki’s ousting at the 2007 ANC elective conference, which gave him the political momentum to run a successful campaign for president in 2009. While Mbeki represented the neoliberal moderate wing of the ANC, Zuma was an avowed leftist and populist, proposing major structural and political reform through land expropriation without compensation and maneuvering South Africa closer to Russia and China through its membership in BRICS, the geopolitical organization with the aforementioned nations alongside Brazil and India. Zuma served from 2009 to 2018, when he resigned due to the threat of a no confidence vote by the National Assembly over corruption allegations. He was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa, his deputy president who has served from 2018 to the present day. Ramaphosa rose to prominence as secretary general of South Africa’s largest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers and was the ANC’s chief negotiator with the South African government during the end of apartheid. Many South Africans who believed Ramaphosa would be Mandela’s successor were surprised when he left politics in 1996 to become a businessman in the private sector. Ramaphosa returned to politics in 2012, serving as deputy president under Jacob Zuma until he was elected in his own right to the presidency in 2018.

Share of political party support of voters for the general election in South Africa as of Spring 2024./The Brenthurst Foundation

Ramaphosa has dealt with a number of problems facing South Africa during his tenure, including the COVID-19 pandemic and massive economic strife. South Africa has the worst unemployment in the world at 32% (with that number increasing to 59% for South Africans between ages 15 and 24), and has the unfortunate distinction of being the country with the greatest wealth inequality. South Africans are also dealing with an energy crisis dubbed "load shedding," characterized by frequent nationwide electricity blackouts stemming from mismanagement within the state-owned power utility, Eskom. The ANC’s reputation has also been tarnished by corruption, particularly under Zuma’s leadership in the 2010s. ANC leaders engaged in rampant graft of public resources and funds, resulting in losses of billions of dollars and public trust in leadership. Ramaphosa has tried to rebuild public trust in the party but has been mostly unsuccessful, with over 75% of South Africans believing that the ANC has failed to significantly improve the lives of the millions of poor Black South Africans during its thirty-year tenure. With the ANC’s vote-share creeping down over the past decades, many analysts believe that the party will not receive a majority of the vote for the first time in the country’s history in 2024, which would force them to enter a coalition government with other parties that are largely united in their opposition to the government’s rule. 

The main opposition party is the Democratic Alliance, led by John Steenhuisen, who has attempted to unite the various smaller opposition parties into a coalition against the ANC known as the Multiparty Charter (MPC). The third largest party in parliament, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is led by radical firebrand Julius Malema, a former ANC youth leader who advocates for radical policy including the expropriation of white-owned land and the nationalization of industry. There is also the ANC breakaway party led by former President Jacob Zuma known as uMkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) that polls suggest will siphon considerable support from Ramaphosa and his majority. Polls suggest that the ANC will receive its smallest share of the vote since the election of Mandela with between 40 and 45%. Polls show the MPC will receive between 30% and 40% of the vote, the EFF will receive somewhere between 10% and 20%, and Zuma’s MK Party will receive approximately 15% of the vote. Additionally, polling trends clearly indicate that the ANC is rapidly losing support, with their polling percentage decreasing by 5 points between November 2022 and February 2024 (from 44% to 39% of the vote). While the final results of the election are unclear, the ANC is almost surely heading towards minority status for the first time since South Africa abolished apartheid, providing an opportunity for a new perspective in leadership for the first time in thirty years. 

Conclusion

Ghana. Senegal, and South Africa are prominent examples of successful and democratic African states with (mostly) freely contested and fair elections. Ghana has a choice between two widely-known and respected politicians, Mahamadu Bawumia and John Mahama, to serve as their next President and tackle the economic and political crises facing the nation. Despite concerns surrounding President Macky Sall's actions in Senegal, including the postponement of elections and the exclusion of certain opposition figures like Ousmane Sonko, the upcoming election in March is poised to bring about a new generation of leadership with the ability to reshape the country’s political landscape. South Africa is headed towards one of the most important elections since the fall of apartheid, with the long-ruling ANC headed towards minority status and the Presidency up for grabs between leaders of the smaller parties through coalition building. These election results will represent the wills of the Ghanaian, Senegalese, and South African people, who will make their voices heard and set a positive example of democracy for the continent as a whole.

Author’s Note: This article was submitted on March 14th, 2024, and the information about the elections described is accurate to that date. As a result, several major events in the Senegalese and South African political process, such as the release from prison of Ousmane Sonko, the nomination of Bassirou Diomaye Faye as the nominee for PASTEF, and the ruling by the South African Constitutional Court that Jacob Zuma was ineligible to stand for the election due to a criminal conviction, were not known at the time of the article’s writing.