Voting began Thursday in Uganda’s presidential election despite a days-long internet shutdown that has been criticised as an anti-democratic tactic in a country where the president has held office since 1986.

Crowds gathered and long lines formed in some areas as polling station openings were delayed and voting materials were seen being delivered after the scheduled 7am opening time.

President Yoweri Museveni, 81, faces seven other candidates, including Robert Kyagulanyi, a musician-turned-politician best known as Bobi Wine, who is calling for political change.

The East African country of roughly 45 million people has 21.6 million registered voters.

Polls are expected to close at 4pm Thursday, according to the electoral commission. Results are constitutionally required to be announced in 48 hours.

Impatient crowds gathered outside polling stations expressing concerns over the delays Thursday morning. Umaru Mutyaba, a polling agent for a parliamentary candidate, said it was “frustrating” to be waiting outside a station in the capital Kampala.

“We can’t be standing here waiting to vote as if we have nothing else to do,” he said.

There have been concerns about transparency, the possibility of hereditary rule, military interference and opposition strategies to prevent vote tampering at polling stations.

Uganda’s internet was shut down Tuesday by the government communications agency, which cited misinformation, electoral fraud and incitement of violence. The shutdown has affected the public and disrupted critical sectors such as banking.

There has been heavy security leading up to voting, including military units deployed on the streets this week.

Amnesty International said security forces are engaging in a “brutal campaign of repression”, citing a November 28 opposition rally in eastern Uganda where the military blocked exits and opened fire on supporters, killing one person.

Museveni urged voters to come out in large numbers during his final rally Tuesday.

“You go and vote, anybody who tries to interfere with your freedom will be crushed. I am telling you this. We are ready to put an end to this indiscipline,” he said.

The national electoral commission chairperson, Simon Byabakama, urged tolerance among Ugandans as they vote.

“Let us keep the peace that we have,” Byabakama said late Wednesday. “Let us be civil. Let us be courteous. Let’s be tolerant. Even if you know that this person does not support (your) candidate, please give him or her room or opportunity to go and exercise his or her constitutional right.”

Authorities also suspended the activities of several civic groups during the campaign season. That Group, a prominent media watchdog, closed its office Wednesday after the interior ministry alleged in a letter that the group was involved in activities “prejudicial to the security and laws of Uganda”.

Veteran opposition figure Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate, remains in prison after he was charged with treason in February 2025.

Source: AP

Guinea’s junta chief Gen Mamady Doumbouya has won the presidential election by a landslide, getting 86.7% of the vote, according to provisional results published by the election commission.

The general is hoping to legitimise his rule after seizing power in a coup in 2021.

A civil society group calling for the return of civilian rule has condemned the election as a “charade” after Gen Doumbouya’s main rivals were barred from contesting, while opposition candidates said the poll was marred by irregularities.

The Democratic Front of Guinea’s flagbearer, Abdoulaye Yero Balde, came a distant second with 6.6%, followed by the Liberal Bloc’s Faya Lansana Millimono with 2%, provisional results show.

On Monday, internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported that access to social media platforms TikTok, YouTube and Facebook had been restricted as Guineans waited for the full results.

There has been no official comment on the restrictions, but opponents see it as an attempt by the junta to stifle criticism of the results.

The 41-year-old general’s victory gives him a seven-year mandate. Should the results be challenged, the Supreme Court has eight days to validate them.

Millimono said on Monday that the election was marred by “systematic fraudulent practices”, citing the expulsion of poll observers, ballot stuffing and intimidation.

The ruling party and the government have yet to comment on the complaints.

After overthrowing then-83-year-old President Alpha Condé in 2021, Gen Doumbouya promised not to seek election and to hand power to a civilian.

“Neither I nor any member of this transition will be a candidate for anything… As soldiers, we value our word very much,” he said at the time.

The junta leader broke his promise by putting his name on the ballot after a new constitution, implemented in September, permitted him to run for office.

Djenabou Toure, the country’s top election official who announced the provisional results, put the voter turnout at more than 80%.

However, a civil society group, the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution, said in a statement on Monday that the turnout was low.

“A huge majority of Guineans chose to boycott the electoral charade,” the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Eight other candidates took part in Sunday’s election, but with the exclusion of main opposition parties RPG Arc en Ciel and UFDG, none of the participants have a solid political footing.

According to the provisional results, six of them got less than 2% of the vote, with Mohamed Nabe getting 0.8%.

Although he is popular with many of Guinea’s youth, Gen Doumbouya has been criticised for restricting opposition activities, banning protests and stifling press freedom in the run-up to the elections.

The general justified deposing Condé on similar charges – including rampant corruption, disregard for human rights and economic mismanagement.

Guinea has the world’s largest bauxite reserves and some of its richest iron ore. Last month, authorities launched the gigantic Simandou iron-ore mine to widespread anticipation.

However, over half of the population lives in poverty, according to World Bank figures.

Source: BBC

Malawi’s former President Peter Mutharika has been declared the winner of last week’s elections, in a huge comeback for the 85-year-old.

Official results show that he won 57% of the vote, compared to the 33% of President Lazarus Chakwera, 70.

Chakwera, a pastor before entering politics, conceded defeat ahead of the final result being declared, phoning Mutharika to congratulate him on his “historic win”.

Mutharika, a former professor of law, served as president from 2014 to 2020, when he lost to Chakwera by a wide margin.

He inherits an economy that is in deep crisis, with a severe shortage of fuel and foreign currency in the poor southern African state.

The official inflation rate is close to 30%, with a frozen chicken in a supermarket in the capital, Lilongwe, costing about $20 (£15), in a nation where most people live on $2 a day or less.

Mutharika is due to address the nation later on Thursday.

The election commission said it took the full eight days it was allowed to announce the result because it wanted to check everything carefully and address the complaints first.

The 2019 election, also won by Mutharika, was annulled by the country’s highest court, which found there had been widespread irregularities, including the use of correction fluid to alter results.

Chakwera won the rerun by a huge margin the following year.

This was the pair’s fourth electoral duel.

Mutharika’s older brother Bingu also served as president and died in office in 2012.

Source: BBC

Ivory Coast’s former First Lady Simone Gbagbo, 76, is the surprise inclusion in a list of five candidates who have been officially cleared to contest next month’s presidential election.

She will run against President Alassane Ouattara, 83, who took power after she and her former husband, Laurent Gbagbo, were captured in a presidential bunker during the conflict that hit the country after the 2010 election.

But the ex-president has been barred from contesting the poll, along with ex-Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan and ex-Credit Suisse bank CEO Tidjane Thiam.

Their disqualification has raised concerns about the legitimacy of the 25 October vote and has sparked fears of instability.

Thiam, who was disqualified by the Constitutional Council due to his previous French citizenship, called the decision “an act of democratic vandalism” and accused the Ouattara administration of orchestrating a “sham election” to cling to power.

Ouattara assumed the presidency in 2011, following Laurent Gbagbo’s arrest after his refusal to accept defeat in the 2010 election.

Ouattara was originally restricted to serving two terms, but a 2016 constitutional overhaul allowed him to seek re-election in 2020, in a vote that was boycotted by the opposition.

He won that election in a landslide, with at least 85 people killed in ensuing unrest. He later declared that he would run for a fourth term.

Laurent Gbagbo has been barred by the Constitutional Council from running for president because of a 2018 criminal conviction.

He was sentenced in absentia for looting the central bank during the political crisis that hit Ivory Coast after the 2010 election.

Although he received a presidential pardon in 2020, it did not restore his right to vote or run for office.

He also faced separate charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC), but he was acquitted.

For Simone Gbagbo, her candidacy is not only politically significant but symbolically powerful in a country where women remain largely underrepresented in national leadership.

Only 30% of Ivorian parliamentarians are women, and few have held senior roles in government.

Once nicknamed “The Iron Lady”, Simone Gbagbo is now poised to become the strongest female contender for the presidency in Ivory Coast’s history.

She and ex-minister Henriette Lagou Adjoua, representing the Political Partners for Peace coalition, are the two women whose candidacy was approved by the Constitutional Council.

Simone Gbagbo has had a long and active career in Ivorian politics, including as an MP – which was later overshadowed by her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections in which more than 3,000 people died.

It led to her being sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 by a court in Ivory Coast.

She was however granted amnesty three years later by President Ouattara to foster reconciliation. Unlike her former husband, the conviction did not lead to her removal from the voter register.

The ICC had also pursued charges against her in 2012, but they were dropped about nine years later.

Since then, she has been quietly and methodically rebuilding her political base, following her break from the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) – the party she co-founded with her former husband, ex-President Gbagbo.

Her campaign slogan is a call to “build a new nation” within “a sovereign, dignified, and prosperous Africa.”

“Her approval legitimises the idea that Ivorian women can aspire to the highest office, regardless of their past, age, or gender. She’s not just a candidate – she’s a symbol,” said local political analyst Severin Yao Kouamés.

It is unclear if Laurent Gbagbo, now disqualified from the election, will support his ex-wife.

The two were married for more than 30 years, sharing a life of political militancy, imprisonment, and governance. They divorced in 2023.

The official election campaign begins on 10 October.

The country has 8.7 million registered voters and there are fears that the exclusion of some of the other candidates could erode public trust and trigger renewed unrest.

Still all eyes will be on whether Simone Gbagbo can reshape the leadership narrative, and become the president.

Source: BBC

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said Tuesday he will seek a fourth term in Ivory Coast’s October 25 election, as tensions rise over the exclusion of many heavyweight opposition candidates.

He had been earlier officially nominated by the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party as its candidate, but had not yet said if he would contest.

“I am a candidate because the constitution of our country allows me to run for another term and my health permits it,” the 83-year-old said, adding that the world’s top cocoa producer was “facing unprecedented security, economic, and monetary challenges, the management of which requires experience”.

The 83-year-old president declared his plan in a televised announcement. He won a third term in 2020 after he initially said he wasn’t going to run again. However, he changed his position following the death of his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly.

The opposition has accused the authorities of choosing their opponents by legal means, but the government insists the judiciary acts independently.

The two main opposition parties have launched a joint campaign to demand the reinstatement of their barred leaders ahead of the presidential election.

This alliance brings together the African People’s Party of Ivory Coast (PPACI) – led by former president Laurent Gbagbo – and the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), the country’s largest opposition force, headed by former international banker Tidjane Thiam.

Thiame has already been barred from running by a court because he has dual citizenship.

Ouattara’s candidacy is contested after he reset the presidential term limit in a constitutional change.

Source: Reuters

A new constitution that has allowed Togo’s long-time head of state Faure Gnassingbé to shift to a new role as all-powerful prime minister – and escape the constraint of presidential term limits – has triggered anger on the streets of the capital, Lomé. Protests are set to continue this Friday.

At least five demonstrators have died while confronting official security forces in recent weeks.

But it is not the orthodox political opposition – predictably crushed in local elections last week – that has mobilised frustrated young Togolese people.

Instead it is musicians, bloggers and activists who have tapped into popular anger and weariness with a regime that has been in power – under the leadership of Faure Gnassingbé or, before him – his father Gnassingbé Éyadéma, for almost six decades.

That outstrips even Cameroon’s 92-year old President Paul Biya – who has just confirmed his intention to stand for an eighth successive term in elections later this year – or Gabon’s father-and-son presidents, Omar Bongo and Ali Bongo, latter of whom was deposed in a coup in August 2023.

The lessons of that episode did not escape Faure Gnassingbé, a shrewd and often discreet operator who quickly moved to devise a new constitutional structure for Togo, to prolong his own hold on power while playing down his personal profile, in a bid to defuse accusations of dynastic rule.

He will no longer need to stand for re-election in his own name.

The 59-year-old holds the premiership because his Union pour la République (Unir) party dominates the national assembly – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, thanks to a constituency map gerrymandered to over-represent its northern heartlands and understate the voting weight of the pro-opposition coastal south.

Gilbert Bawara, Togo’s civil service and labour minister, maintains the 2024 election was above board, with “all the major political actors and parties” taking part.

“The government cannot be held responsible for the weakness of the opposition,” Bawara told BBC Focus on Africa TV last week.

He added that those with a genuine reason to demonstrate could do so within the law, blaming activists abroad for inciting “young people to attack security forces” in an attempt to destabilise the country.

The new constitutional framework was announced at short notice in early 2024 and quickly approved by the compliant government-dominated national assembly. There was no attempt to secure general public approval through a referendum.

A one-year transition concluded this May as Gnassingbé – who had been head of state since 2005 – gave up the presidency and was installed in the premiership, a post now strengthened to hold all executive power and total authority over the armed forces.

To occupy the presidency, a role now reduced to a purely ceremonial function, legislators chose the 86-year old former business minister, Jean-Lucien Savi de Tové.

Source: BBC

A South African court has halted plans to bury former Zambian President Edgar Lungu at a private ceremony just as it was about to start.

The news was only announced to mourners in South Africa after a funeral mass had already finished.

This is the latest twist in a row between the government and Lungu’s family over his burial, after the family opted for a private ceremony in South Africa, rather than a full state funeral at home.

The Zambian government had filed an urgent case in the Pretoria High Court seeking to stop the burial planned by his family.

The court said that the funeral would not go ahead following an “agreement between the parties” however it appears that any funeral won’t happen until August at the earliest.

The dispute follows a long-standing feud between Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema, with Lungu’s family saying he had indicated that Hichilema should not attend his funeral.

Following Lungu’s death in South Africa aged 68, the family wanted to be in charge of the funeral arrangements, including the repatriation of his body, but the Zambian authorities sought to take control.

The government and his family later agreed he would have a state funeral before relations broke down over the precise arrangements, prompting the family to opt for a burial in South Africa.

President Hichilema has since argued that Lungu, as a former president, “belongs to the nation of Zambia” and should be buried in the country.

The Pretoria court gave Zambian attorney general Mulilo D Kabesha until 4 July to submit his “amended notice of motion” in support of Lungu’s repatriation to Zambia. His family has until 11 July to file their opposing papers.

“This matter will be heard as a special motion on the 4th of August 2025,” the court said. The costs of the urgent application will be determined then.

The Zambian government argues that personal wishes should not override the greater public interest, citing the case of founding President Kenneth Kaunda.

In 2021, Kaunda’s family said he wanted to be laid to rest next to his wife and not at the site designated by the government.

However, the government went ahead and buried Kaunda at Embassy Memorial Park in Lusaka.

The current row over Lungu’s burial underscores the tense relationship between him and his successor, which played out in life and continues even in death.

When Lungu was president, Hichilema was locked up for over 100 days on treason charges after Hichilema’s motorcade allegedly refused to give way for him.

Source: BBC

Burundi’s veteran ruling party won every seat in last week’s parliamentary elections, the electoral commission said Wednesday, in a vote critics and observers say was tainted by irregularities.

“Nationally, the CNDD-FDD came first with 96.51 percent of the vote,” election commission chief Prosper Ntahorwamiye said in a live televised ceremony.

None of the other parties obtained two percent of the votes – the constitutional threshold to sit in the National Assembly – “so all 100 seats go to the CNDD-FDD”, he added.

The final results of last Thursday’s poll are due to be announced by the Constitutional Council on June 20.

Members of the National Congress for Liberty (CNL), the main opposition party which was barred from the vote, alleged multiple and forced voting, as well as “banned access” and the “arbitrary imprisonment” of its observers.

Anicet Niyonkuru, a legislative candidate and leader of the smaller opposition Council of Patriots party, told AFP that voters put pre-filled ballots in the ballot box, calling it “a major fraud that was seen everywhere”.

Olivier Nkurunziza, the leader of the Uprona opposition party which received just 1.38 percent of the vote, said the elections were “rigged”.

The Uprona party “denounces rigged elections”, Nkurunziza told AFP adding: “We have killed democracy.”

He said the CNDD-FDD had won 100 percent of the vote in some districts, with no invalid ballots, abstentions or absentees, despite Uprona fielding at least 50 candidates in each area.

Journalists and voters who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons also told AFP of significant irregularities.

Source: AFP

The Togolese leader, Faure Gnassingbé, has been sworn in as “President of the Council of Ministers” – a new post which is the highest office in the government’s executive branch and has no official term limits.

This follows constitutional reform that ended presidential elections, and introduced a parliamentary system.

The opposition said the change was in order to allow President Gnassingbé to stay in power indefinitely.

His family has ruled the country for 58 years – Faure Gnassingbé took over in 2005 from his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had ruled for almost four decades.

This latest change results from a new constitution approved by lawmakers last year, labelled by critics and opposition figures as an “institutional coup d’état”.

Gnassingbé’s government had paused some of the changes following huge backlash, but has moved ahead with his new role.

Togo’s municipal elections in July will be the first under the new constitution, which has replaced the presidential system with a parliamentary one.

In theory, the role of president of the republic is now only an honorary title, but analysts say Gnassingbé’s power is more entrenched than ever with his new post of council president.

His party, the Union for the Republic, won a huge majority in last year’s parliamentary election, taking of 108 out of 113 seats in the National Assembly.

Source: BBC