Policy Significance Statement

The increasing mistrust in technology platforms and emerging technologies, such artificial intelligence, highlights a critical challenge for policymakers. With technology increasingly used in electoral processes, there is a need for policies that ensure transparency, accountability, and trustworthiness of digital platforms to prevent misinformation, manipulation, and mistrust. Recommendations are proposed on how policymakers should work to establish guidelines or frameworks to regulate technology in elections to protect democratic integrity.

2. Electoral practices in Africa and the consequent inefficiencies

Before the colonialisation of sub-Saharan Africa, African societies had a wide variety of polities with widely different forms of government varying from powerful centralised monarchies or empires to the so-called stateless societies in which some form of public order was maintained without any centralised institution of the type which Western observers were able to classify as constituting a state. The idea of popular sovereignty expressed through elections is in many cases, newer (Ellis et al., Reference Ellis and Abbink2000).

When colonial powers occupied Africa in the 19th century, they imposed local rulers on many societies. For societies that had chiefs, they either displaced the existing rulers and imposed rulers of their own, or forged alliances with the incumbent chiefs (Bates, Reference Bates2010). After World War II, the imperialists were no longer able to dominate the course of events outside their European base and, therefore, sought to change the outcomes they could no longer control. Where in the past, they could pick or impose local political leaders, they now had to be satisfied with merely shaping the way the leaders were chosen. Consequently, out of political necessity, they began to introduce their own version of representative institutions and displaced pre-colonial representative institutions. They permitted prominent locals to take legislative and executive counsel roles and, after some interval, allowed local citizens to choose who among them were to do so. The culminating process was “self-government,” the assumption of full executive and legislative power by local leaders (Bates, Reference Bates2010).

The colonial governments may have been forced to introduce electoral competition and representative institutions, but the device they employed to shape these institutions was not one that pursued democratic rights and freedoms but one that sought to safeguard the institution that had secured foreign domination over the African people (Bates, Reference Bates2010).

Twenty-six sub-Saharan countries in Africa had gained independence by the late 1960s. However, the general optimism that a new world was being created from the best mix of African and European traditions felt at the independence of many African countries was quickly tempered by the realities of political life. By 1960, when most of Africa became independent, nine countries had formed one-party regimes. By the mid-1970s, seven more governments imposed single-party rule. In the initial period just before and after independence, the formation of opposition tended to be voluntary or the product of negotiation. Political consolidation became involuntary and a product of rigged elections, jailing of political opponents, and outlawing of political parties. This was followed by a wave of coups and the formation of military regimes. In some cases, the military chose to hand back power to civilians, but in others, they remained in office. By the mid-1990s, authoritarian regimes had become a dominant feature of African politics (Bates, Reference Bates2010).

The pattern of democratic process differs among African countries as with the nature, context, and outcome of elections. The way political transition was negotiated influenced the electoral processes. Four patterns emerged: first was countries where civil society was clamorous and organised, took the initiative for political reforms, engaged the state fiercely, and stamped its will on the course of the transition. The outcomes of this were that the new political actors ensured that electoral laws were overhauled to allow for free and fair electoral competition and the institutional infrastructure of elections. The second category was countries where civil society took the initiative for political reforms that were scuttled by the ruling regime and, consequently, the existing restrictive electoral laws were either left untouched or were not significantly altered and the authoritarian control of the regime remained intact. Third was where the state took the initiative for political reforms promoting a form of guided democracy in which it consciously managed, regulated, and manipulated the electoral process to impose its interests and little was achieved in terms of meaningful results through elections. The fourth was political transitions that devolved into severe political conflicts and civil wars (Adejumobi, Reference Adejumobi2000). However, in Africa’s recent political history, there has been a new wave of democratisation backed by new constitutions promoting electoral integrity, but as the case studies below will demonstrate, the outcomes of these constitutional developments are being sabotaged by both state and non-state actors.

These trends suggest that elections are only an expedient political exercise for ruling regimes, partly because of their economic implications in terms of external aid flows and economic assistance, and partly because of their public relations advantage in polishing the political profile of the regime. All these trends have resulted in a deep mistrust for elections in Africa by African citizens and in a bid to promote the legitimacy of the outcome of these organised political events called elections, various technologies have been introduced and their application have further eroded trust in Africa’s fragile democracy.

3. Use of technology in Africa’s elections: the intention and outcome

Election processes depend on trust for their legitimacy. The basic tasks of election administration—voter registration, records and content management, chains of custody, and outreach—are all labour-intensive assignments that can be simplified with technology if used effectively. Consequently, various technologies are being deployed to, for example, automatically transfer data from handwritten paper records to build in efficiencies in security, time, and accuracy. Furthermore, programmes are being implemented to capture election results on voting days and prevent the manipulation of election results. In Nigeria’s 2019 elections, to reduce the occurrence of violence and fraud, the Independent National Electoral Commission introduced an automated fingerprint identification system to verify the authenticity of voters, which limited the extent to which electoral fraud could be committed (Chukwuma, Reference Chukwuma2022). Further, in Ghana, facial recognition technology was used to verify voters and prevent impersonation (Ahmed and Maru, Reference Ahmed and Maru2024).

There have been several use cases of adopting technologies for elections in Africa with risks for voter disenfranchisement and highly harmful outcomes. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa piloted new voter management devices in the 2021 local government elections, calling it the country’s “most technologically advanced election” (Maseko, Reference Maseko2024). These internet-enabled devices were used to electronically capture voter information, ensure voters were in the correct districts, and provide a live tracking tool for voter participation on Election Day. However, the IEC reported that over 100,000 voters’ details were not uploaded into the electoral system, preventing them from casting their votes (Maseko, Reference Maseko2024). While the new technology was largely successful, challenges such as voter exclusion, poor internet connectivity at some polling stations, and the high cost of implementation highlight the ongoing hurdles in adopting election technology across African countries.

During the 2015 Nigerian elections, it was reported that Cambridge Analytica tested its infamous AI-driven data analysis technology as the percussor to its use in the 2016 US elections by hacking the private and personal information of the main opposition candidate (Mavedzenge and Saki 2023). Cambridge Analytica was also reported to rely on AI-embedded social media algorithms to identify and target online supporters of the opposition with disinformation as part of an effort to sway the voting preferences in favour of the re-election of the President (Mavedzenge and Saki 2023).

While the use of technology in Africa’s elections have been intentional as part of political strategies to sway election outcomes with the manipulative use of technologies, there have also been some positive intentionality on the part of some African governments to strengthen electoral processes and improve the integrity of the outcomes. With the results of Africa’s elections often disputed with allegations of vote rigging, a rationale for the adoption of emerging technologies in conducting elections is to build back trust in electoral processes.

In 2022, Kenya held its third general election since the adoption of the 2010 Constitution. This was an important milestone for Kenya, given the tragedy of the 2008 elections, when several lives were lost following the violence disputing the outcome of the 2008 elections. An important outcome of that tragic episode was the adoption of the 2010 Constitution, which provided important electoral reform in Kenya. This was to address the lack of trust in the electoral system that had endured in Kenya for a long time. As part of the reform, Section 44 of the Elections Act of 2011 introduced the use of electoral technology. The Act required the electoral body to adopt technology in the electoral process and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) subsequently developed a technology known as the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS), which utilised a hybrid approach of both technology and manual processes for elections. The KIEMS was used for biometric voter registration and, on the Election Day, for voter identification, as well as the transmission of election results from polling stations to the National Tallying Centre.

Following the declaration of President Ruto as the winner of the 2022 elections with <51% of the votes, Raila Odinga, the main opposition presidential candidate who lost the election with over 48% of votes, challenged the outcome of the election on a few grounds including the technology used by IEBC during the 2022 election. First, it was submitted to the Supreme Court that the way the technology was deployed and used fell short of prescribed constitutional and statutory standards (Odinga vs. Ruto, 2022). Second, it was submitted that the IEBC violated its constitutional duty by delegating the design, implementation, and conduct of the KIEMS component of the election to a foreign company—Smartmatic International Holding BV (Odinga vs. Ruto, 2022). Third, Odinga argued that the IEBC vigorously fought any attempt to subject Smartmatic’s activities to accountability and transparency, including the safeguards required by the Elections Act and its regulations (Odinga vs. Ruto, 2022).

The arguments presented by Odinga are a broader reflection of the mistrust that the use of technologies in Africa’s elections are fuelling. In an environment where public institutions are deeply perceived to be untrustworthy, this further raises the imperative for the development of technologies that are safe and trustworthy. Such development requires consideration not only for the technology design but also for the relationship between the state and the citizen, as well as between the citizen and industry.

In response to Odinga’s arguments to the Supreme Court, the IEBC submitted that the electoral system met the constitutional threshold; that all necessary information was accessed only by authorised persons; the information was accurate, complete, and protected from malicious modification either by authorised or unauthorised persons; it maintained an audit trail on activities related to information; and the information was available and could be authenticated using various security features (Odinga vs. Ruto, 2022).

The Supreme Court did not engage substantively with the arguments presented by Odinga and simply focussed on the evidential burden on the applicants and rejected the arguments by Odinga on the basis that credible evidence was not presented for the allegations made to support the required standard of proof.

While the Kenyan Supreme Court decision did not find credible evidence of the allegations made, from a public perception perspective, a shadow of doubt was cast on the integrity of the conduct of the elections and the ensuing outcome. Consequently, while the original rationale for the adoption of technologies was to build back trust, often, allegations made about the deployment and use of those very same technologies serve to further erode trust in electoral processes.

The distrust in Africa’s elections is not only a result of the allegations made by opposition parties when they lose elections, but also through the misuse of emerging technologies by other actors during and after elections. While social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and X have been a valuable tool for citizen self-reporting about events happening in their voting stations, social media platforms have also been weaponised to spread misinformation to drive specific narratives. The rise of AI has been central to these objectives. For example, the rise of AI has been used to influence public opinion by spreading misinformation or disinformation. In 2023, there was a leaked audio that turned out to be a deepfake widely distributed over WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media platforms during Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. The fake audio purported to depict a secret conversation between leaders of Nigeria’s main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, planning to compromise elections. This rise of sophisticated deepfake technologies and massive language models raises sociotechnical problems about elections.

At a broader level, the deployment of technologies in Africa needs to be considered in relation to their impact on the civil and political rights of citizens in Africa. It is also important to consider infrastructural inequalities impact at both the individual and state levels (Breckenridge, Reference Breckenridge2021). In Kenya and other developing countries where electricity supply may be unstable, this means essential systems may go offline: the Kenya elections were in fact threatened by the introduction of new electoral systems that struggled with both electricity supply and Internet coverage, which would have disenfranchised millions of voters without the ability to rely on a manual backup for voting (Privacy International, 2013). The deployment of technologies in running elections are thus both developmental and implicate rights concerns that need to be addressed.

4. What the future holds for technology in Africa’s elections

There are three important implications that should be considered for the adoption of various technologies in running elections in Africa. The first is the adoption of a human rights-based approach, and the second is the role of private actors in conducting elections. Third, it is necessary to ensure the adoption of technologies does not heighten digital inequalities.