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Elections in Cameroon and Ivory Coasts saw victories for their long serving leaders.
Mister Alison Watara has been provisionally declared elected in the first round with eighty nine point seven seven percent of the votes cast.
But with opposition candidates barred from running. There's a warning about the rise of democratic dictators. The population knows very well that the Constitutional Council and the Electoral Commission are just an extension of the regime. On today's podcast, we're discussing the wave of no contest elections across Africa, why political analysts are concerned, and which countries are bucking the trend.
I'm Jennifer Zaba Saja and this is the Next to Africa podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent driving the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg can provide. Joining me this week is Bloomberg Senior reporter Yinka Ibukun, who's written one of this week's Next Africa newsletters on this very subject.
Yinka, thanks so much for being with us this week.
Thanks for having me ched.
Yeah, it's it's always great to speak with you and catch up with you, there's been quite an activity, at least on the electoral front across the continent, and we're going to try to unpack it in the next few minutes. But maybe we'd just start with Cameroon because many people are looking at the age of Paulbia, ninety two years old. He won an eighth term and he's the world's oldest president. I mean, break this down for us. What would you say is the significance of this election?
Yeah, well, I mean this election has put cameboon at Adges Crossroad. I would say that the attentions kicked off when the main opposition leader was barred from running back in July, and that basically meant that the president would be facing a weekend opposition. But it was the candidacy of Ista Chiroma Bakari, who's a man who served in the Bia administration for about two decades, that ended up being the real game changer in this election because young
people have been hungry for change in Cameroon. They've never known any leader other than Bia, and so they rallied around Chiroma and came out and masked to vote for him, to the point where Chiroma actually declared himself winner of
the vote by his own party tally FO. Days later, the official results said that it was President Bia and not Chiroma, who won the election with four percent of the vote, and so that decisive win has fit claims that there was rigging, especially because the are barely even campaign and as you said, he's ninety two years old, the oldest president in the world. He's been in power in Cameroon for more than forty years, and so.
Here you are, he hardly.
Shows up at the campaign and still walks away with a comfortable win in a country that's basically facing a successionist war, where his administration has chased lots of corruption scandals, and also where there's really high youth unemployment. And so as we speak, there's actually sporadic protests erupting across Cameroon to challenge the outcome of the vote.
Wow, and a country with the median age of eighteen years old, right having, as you mentioned, probably haven't known any other leader, most of them, Yinka. Let's also move on to the Ivory Coast. In an earlier podcast, we talked about some of the challenges that the country was facing leading up to October's vote. Now Watara has been
re elected. What do you make of the response, and especially from the international community because he is well known and to a certain extent well regarded internationally.
So Ivory Coasts also just concluded its vote and Wataha won with ninety percent of the vote after key challenges were excluded. So with that result, you know, there's also eyebrows being raised. It was hardly an open vote, I think that's fair to say, but the international community has largely looked away, and there's probably two reasons why that is. First, Wataha has delivered strong economic growth for Courdivois, which is Africa's biggest coco producer, and he's created an investor friendly
environment there. But perhaps more importantly, he's seen as a reliable, secure ally in a region that's been threatened by jihadists. And so for Western government it's likely a situation where they're balancing their priorities and choosing probably stability of more democratic concerns. Though it's interesting to note that it's actually not been like the regular congratulatory messages, so they've not criticized the vote, but they's not congratulated Wataha either.
And let's go from the West to the east. Yinka.
Because Tanzania just went to the polls on Wednesday where another opposition figure was barred from running.
What's the state of play there.
Unfortunately, it's more of the same Jenet bite. It's becoming a pattern. This a situation where the opposition is barred and then a clear path is created for the incumbent to stay in power. And so what you saw in Cameroon in Ivory coast's basically also happening in different ways to a different degree, but it's happening all the same in Tanzania. And so in the case of President Samya Suluhu Hassan, it's two main key opponents that were barred
from running, including one that's facing trees and charges. And so yes, even though the vote has happened, there was an election, balance boxes were put out. The outcome is pretty predictable there also.
And there's quite a crackdown on what's happening on the ground.
There's a security forces cracked out, but also interestingly there's been a crackdown on the internet. And I think that what you see cutting across Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Cameroon and really across Africa is that you have a really young population, and they're challenging the status quo in ways that you know, these traditional systems aren't used to. There's
no central leader. They are able to mobilize each other through social media, and that's making governments wary and so basically, in the case of Tanzania, they literally shut off the Internet.
Wow, which, as we've seen, it's a powerful tool for a number of organizers INCA. For this piece, I understand you spoke to a political scientist who gave you his own concerns about these no contest elections.
What did he say to you?
Yeah, So I did this piece with my colleague at Cordonto who went to the University of Ghana and spoke to a lecturer there, Kwame asa Asante, and so he told him that, you know, this trend of blocking the opposition to allow the comments to stain power is given rise to democratic dictators where you kind of keep the appearance of the democracy. You have the ballot boxes, you have the constitutional courts, all the stuff that a democracy
should have, but actually there's no real choice. Citizens don't get to pick who's going to rule over them, and so that authoritarian drift is actually prompting military take overies in many places, it's tempting the military to basically jump in and say, hey, we're here and we can restore order. The democracy's flawed, this corruption, and we can do better than this so called democratic leaders. And so we've seen that play out in the Sahel, especially where we'll actually
jumulated in the streets when soldiers took over. And so that's what he's concerned about, that we're creating the conditions for military takeovers to happen more broadly.
And we also saw that from Madagascar just a few days ago.
Exactly.
Binka hold that thought.
When we come back from the break, well, look at where in Africa is going against this trend and potentially what we might be able to learn from some of those.
We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today.
We're looking at the recent run of so called no contest elections in Africa and what they say about the state of democracy on the continent. Senior reporter Yinka Ibukun is still with me. Yinka, you use the example of Senegal in your piece. For those who may not remember last year, how did that unfold?
So? I mean Senego had its election last year and Senegal is basically a bright light of hope in the
context that we find ourselves in today. Because in Senegal, what happened was that President Makishal at the time was basically looking like he was going to go for a third term, which would have been at least by the text, un constitutional, and so there were huge protests that broke out across Senecal to prevent him from doing so, and he eventually announced that he had no intention of running at that term, and so it was really the people
who forced a president to basically honor the constitution there. It's a really young country. We've said this for all the countries we've mentioned so far, And what happened after that was that it was really a generational shift. The president that they ended up electing was forty four years old at the time, the youngest president I think in Africa elected, and so it was a generational shift that happened there and a response to young people's demands.
Are we seeing similar instances of success elsewhere?
I mean, what we're seeing is youth pushed back. People are organizing through social medias and other means, and their demand better and in some cases it's toupled governments in Nepal, in Bangladesh. In other cases, it's just made sure that people's voices have been heard in Kenya, in Mozambique, in Morocco, and so you're seeing young people more willing to mobilize these countries and majority young people, and they are increasingly have little to lose because often the growth that you're
seeing in these countries is not inclusive. It's not creating enough jobs for them. And in the case of Madagascar, for instance, they were asking for really basic things like it started off with them just asking for water and electricity, you know, and it ended up toppling a government and bringing in a military leadership. So it's really about young people mobilizing getting better at it.
Yeah, and it goes to show really what you know, that these leaders can't ignore this. You know, you mentioned Kenya and we saw changes after a lot of those protests that unfortunately were deadly, but you know, the president actually had to take notice of some of the changes that they were calling for, which I think was really notable to mention.
Yinka before we let you go.
It's also worth mentioning because you point out in your piece it's not all necessarily doom and gloom when it comes to transitions of power. There was Ghana, Malawi and the Seychelles this year. What are you paying attention to just to get a sense of maybe where things are headed next.
I mean, you mentioned deadly protests and that's really sad where people have to lose their lives to make a point, you know, to have their voices heard. And so I'm actually looking at these gen z movements of young people mobilizing, but more so beyond that mobilization, like if it's able to bring about real change. And I don't know how much change it can actually bring when you still have constitutions, when the courts uh compromised or the electrical commissions aren't
truly independent. You don't want to just have people put their bodies on the line but then have your real change. So I'm looking for real change and what that would look like coast dis genity movement in each of these countries and beyond.
Yinka, thank you so much for joining us as always and for all of your reporting, and you can read Yinka's reporting on Bloomberg platforms now, including our Next Africa newsletter. Here's some of the other stories from the region we've been following this week. South African President Zero Ramopouza said negotiations for a trade deal with the US were ongoing
and voiced optimism for an agreement. Ramaposa stated that negotiations with the US were now quote based on text, which he characterized as progress towards getting an agreement nailed down. And Namibia repaid it's seven hundred and fifty million dollar eurobond, the largest single day debt maturity in the Southwest African
nation's history. According to the Finance minister, the redemption seeks to enhance the country's credit worthiness and positions it favorably for potential future engagements in the global capital markets if circumstances warrant, and you can find these stories on Bloomberg platforms, including the Next Africa Newsletter. Will put a link to that in the show notes. This program was produced by
Adrian Bradley and tiwa Adebayo. Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you usually get your podcasts, But for now, I'm Jennifer Zabasadra.
Thanks as always for listening.