Africa’s Electoral Mechanics of Permanence are Cracking

Johan van der Merwe | Africa Fellow

Image sourced from Raveloaritiana Mamisoa via Wikimedia Commons

In June 2024, young Kenyans forced the Kenyan government to back down, achieving what no opposition party or civil society organisation had managed in some time. Using TikTok, X, and WhatsApp, they translated a punishing finance bill into local languages, crowdfunded legal aid for arrested protesters, and live-streamed police violence into the phones of millions, leading President Ruto to withdraw the Finance Bill entirely. No corporate influence. No hidden political agenda. No “saviour” figure. A generation had just discovered what it could do. One of the most important stories in African politics today is not the extension of the current leaders’ grip, but the tension growing between them and the continent’s young, connected, and increasingly ungovernable majority.

In January 2026, 81-year-old Yoweri Museveni, in power since seizing it by armed rebellion in 1986, was declared the winner of Uganda’s presidential election with nearly 72 per cent of the vote, under an internet blackout, with his main opponent driven into hiding. In Cameroon, 92-year-old Paul Biya secured an eighth term last October, years after having abolished presidential term limits. In Burkina Faso, coup leader Ibrahim Traore, having abandoned promises to hold elections, dissolved every political party in the country in January, before telling citizens in April they should simply “forget about” democracy. These instances are not unusual. They are models for how power endures.

The model has a problem. Africa is home to the world’s youngest population, with about 70 per cent of sub-Saharan Africans under 30. Youth unemployment across the continent is catastrophic with surveys in 2024 showing three-quarters of young Africans struggling to find work. This economic exclusion, combined with internet access and a growing awareness of the gap between what leaders promise and what is actually delivered, is driving demonstrations and civil disobedience.

What Kenya ignited spread quickly. Inspired by the youth-led movement in Kenya, Anti-corruption protests erupted in Uganda in July 2024. Nigeria’s #EndBadGovernance demonstrations drew tens of thousands to the streets in August 2024. Post-election protests in Mozambique drew mass youth participation following a controversial October 2024 vote. A year later, Madagascar’s #GenZMada uprising led to President Andry Rajoelina fleeing abroad and culminated in a military takeover. In September 2025, the Gen Z 212 Movement, a leaderless youth coalition, took to the streets in Morocco. Across all countries, a consistent pattern held: decentralised organisation, digital coordination, no single leader to arrest, and an explicit rejection of the ethnic brokering that has long defined African governance. When President Ruto noted that protesters had taken to the streets “tribeless”, he identified the movement’s most subversive quality. Ethnic fragmentation has been the master tool of incumbent African governance for decades. The moment a generation abandons it and rallies together instead around shared demands for transparency and economic justice, the architecture of incumbent power begins to crack.

The signal of change is not only coming from the streets. In the continent’s functioning democracies, voters are sending the same message through the ballot box and with equal force. In May 2024, South Africa’s African National Congress fell to 40 per cent of the vote, its worst result since the end of Apartheid, losing the parliamentary majority it had held since 1994 and forming a coalition government for the first time in the country’s democratic history. Six months later, in Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party was swept from office in a landslide after 58 uninterrupted years in power, its vote collapsing from 38 parliamentary seats to four. In both countries, the verdict was delivered peacefully and driven by the same grievances about unemployment, corruption and the quiet fury of a generation that has been subject to unfulfilled political promises. These are not fragile states or autocracies. They are two of the continent’s most admired democracies. That makes the result more striking. It suggests the shift underway is systemic, crossing borders, crossing political systems, and crossing the divide between protest and the polling station.

Those who dismiss this as transient unrest point to a legitimate weakness. Protest energy without institutional expression rarely produces durable change. In Kenya, at least 40 protesters were killed and dozens remain disappeared. In Nigeria, the economic reforms that triggered the marches remain largely intact. In Burkina Faso, Traore’s dissolution of every political party in January was followed, in April, by the dissolution of 118 NGOs and civil society groups. In Madagascar, jubilation has given way to disenchantment, with protests being repressed and Gen Z activists being arrested in 2026. This is a deliberate, systematic dismantling of the very infrastructure through which civic energy might otherwise be converted into political power. The crackdowns are severe, and they are working, in the short term.

In June 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya’s president said two words that no sitting African head of state had been forced to say in a very long time: “I concede.”  That concession, forced by a leaderless, tribeless, digitally organised protest, may yet prove to be the most consequential sentence in African politics this decade. It inspired similar movements continent wide and helped topple President Andry Rajoelina. The mechanics of permanence, for now, still hold in the places where they were built to hold. But from Nairobi to Gaborone, from Lagos to Cape Town, a generation has discovered its own voice. It has seen it work. And it is not finished.

Johan van der Merwe is in his final year at the University of Sydney, completing a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts with a major in Economics.

Born in Australia to South African parents, Johan has always had an interest in Africa’s intricate socio-political landscapes, liberation movements, and economic challenges. This fascination deepened during his years at Hilton College, a boarding school in South Africa. His connection to the continent endures today as a director of De Aap Private Nature Reserve.

Johan has studied in Scotland and the Netherlands and undertook research at the European Commission in Brussels, which shaped his passion for international policy. Johan also brings legal expertise from his time at Norton White and his current role at K&L Gates LLP. 

His intellectual interests lie at the intersection of law, religion and development economics, underpinned by a passion for political philosophy and individual liberty.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. AI tools were used by this author for editorial assistance, including grammar checks, phrasing suggestions, layout and structural refinement but all content is original and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.