2024 is the biggest election year in history. Up to 18 African countries will elect national leaders. Yet many of the elections are in countries that aren't true democracies and are therefore unlikely to result in any change. Across Africa, democracy is still a very young system of governance, and in many countries, it's floundering. In a 2023 survey of 54k Africans across 38 countries, only 39.2% of respondents were somewhat or very satisfied with democracy. This is down from 49.6% in 2012. This dissatisfaction could lead to greater civil unrest and the return of more military regimes. There have already been 9 coups since 2020.
This product provides data on the state of democracy across the continent and provides a centralised platform for tracking elections and their results. It aggregates information that helps put the elections in perspective and clarify the varying significance of the elections in different countries.
EIU's Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is scored on a 0-10 scale and classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy”, “flawed democracy”, “hybrid regime” or “authoritarian regime." This data was sourced from the 2023 EIU Democracy Index.
This map highlights which countries are currently in active civil war or ruled by military regimes.
Across Africa, democracy is still a very young system of governance. The age of democracy in each country helps contextualise its level of maturity and effectiveness. This map shows the number of years that have passed in the country's current, uninterrupted period of democracy. Countries that no longer holding competitive multi-party elections or have never held them are labeled as "Non-democracy."
These population counts are from the most recent UN Population Estimates (2021-2022). They provide a sense of the scale of the population that will be impacted by the elections.
These GDP values are from the World Bank's most recent 2022 estimates. They provide a sense of the scale of the economies that will be impacted by the elections.
Explore in-depth data on African politics and democracy, visualized using interactive maps of Africa.
This page contains five different maps of Africa, providing insights into the geographical distribution of various key metrics. These include:
- Democracy levels according to the Economist Intelligence Unit,
- Coup and conflict status, highlighting which African countries are currently under military regimes or experiencing major conflicts,
- Age of uninterrupted democracy, showing how long each country has been considered democratic based on the absence of coups and the presence of multiparty elections (often viewed as more democratic than single-party elections),
- Population size of African countries, based on United Nations data, and
- GDP of African countries, based on World Bank data.