In 2024, countries with more than half the world’s population—over four billion people—will send their citizens to the polls. 76 countries are scheduled to hold elections in which all voters have the chance to cast a ballot in 2024.
Of the 71 covered by the Democracy Index, 43 will enjoy free and fair votes, the other 28 do not meet the essential conditions for a democratic vote. Eight of the ten most populous countries in the world—Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States—will hold elections in 2024.
More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year. 2024, the biggest election year in history, will shape African politics for better or worse. But this great march to the ballot box does not necessarily mean an explosion of democracy.
This unprecedented vote-fest comes at a moment when classic forms of liberal democracy are under existential attack from authoritarian dictators, military coup plotters and Islamist militants from Venezuela to Chad.
The two continents with the largest number of countries voting in 2024 are Europe (37) and Africa (18), though they could hardly be further apart in the Democracy Index. The Middle East and North Africa are the regions with the lowest overall score, while sub-Saharan Africa is not much better.
Vote-fest in Africa and Rwanda’s highly anticipated elections
African countries with a combined population of over 330 million, including Algeria, Ghana, Mozambique, and Rwanda, will hold elections. The biggest will be in South Africa, home to more than 60 million people. A divided and weak opposition means that, despite a series of corruption scandals, the ruling African National Congress is almost certain to win again.
In Rwanda, lawmakers approved amendments to the constitution allowing the merging of parliamentary and presidential elections in 2024 and in April 2023. Over 30 articles, including the title of the constitution, were altered to pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held simultaneously and add one extra year to the current parliament, whose mandate was to end in 2023.
In July 2024, Rwanda will hold presidential and parliamentary elections, simultaneously. The ruling party, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), has confirmed President Kagame as their presidential candidate.
The only other confirmed candidate is Dr. Frank Habineza, president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, who is also a sitting member of the parliament’s lower chamber.
All but one of the five members of the G5 Sahel counterterrorism partnership in Africa have experienced takeovers since 2021 by military juntas that now talk of making a transition back to civilian rule — Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger. So has neighboring Guinea on the West African coast. In Chad, Mali, and Guinea, elections are expected in 2024 or early 2025.
Algeria, Tunisia, Ghana, Namibia, Mozambique, Senegal, Togo, and South Sudan are among the African countries holding elections in 2024.
Historically, transitions from military rule in Africa are drawn-out, disappointing affairs that involve imaginary timelines, repeated delays, and dubious dialogue processes. The data show that post-coup transitions in Africa are just as likely to culminate in one-party rule or a reversion to military rule as they are likely to produce democratic governance.
However, many of these fraught transitions do at some point involve elections. – Of the G5 Sahel, Niger has not yet defined the formal duration of the transition, while Burkina Faso dismissed the idea. International election observation could play an important role in these transitions.