Forecast2020 in Brief: Elections across Africa

First published 13th January 2020 as part of Forecast2020
by Tom Warneke
Africa | Operating in Foreign Environments | Understanding Your World

In Africa, there are a lot of democracies in Africa today, unlike the 90s or the 80s where military rule or coups were found in many countries. Yet, African democracies are highly complex and vulnerable to different elements. Importantly, ethnic diversity in many countries leads to divisive tribal politics, political parties often times don’t have a national outlook and are skewed towards a particular ethnic group or region. In addition, many African countries are only democracies on paper but in reality are often something very different.

There’s a multitude of African nations heading to the polls in 2020, all with their own unique challenges and threats for the populations, their neighbouring states and businesses and multinational entities.

In 2020, a number of countries are going to go to the polls. These include Togo, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Tanzania, Seychelles, Sudan and Burkina Faso.

With so many elections in 2020, we have classified the nations into three risk levels: the stable states, the fragile states and the high risk, critical states. The full article details our take country by country, risk by risk.

Overall, it’s a busy year across the continent as we’ll see waves of change politically. While some will be peaceful and relatively benal, others have the potential to demonstrate significant political and security risks. We’ll be watching.

We’re watching these elections closely at ComplexGlobal to keep abreast of regional analysis and what this means for our clients on the African continent. For more insight and analysis on this event as well as a global understanding of the issues that affect you, explore our wide range of analysis, intelligence and commentary at www.complexglobal.co