Multiparty elections are not only the sine qua non of modern representative democracy, they also constitute perhaps the most notable set of formal institutions on the continent today. At the same time, electoral institutions in Africa are often accompanied by the kind of competitive informal institutions described in Chapter 15. This has led to a fierce debate about the quality and impact of elections in Africa.

Elections in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa) are more common than ever in the continent's history: multiparty elections have spread to almost every country. This is all the more remarkable given Africa's relatively brief experience with elections. While multiparty elections were held on the continent before 1989, the real upsurge came only after the end of the Cold War.

Under colonialism, colonial subjects in the French territories voted in elections both to assemblies in France and to local government councils, and elections were also held for councils with limited legislative power in some of the English colonies. In conjunction with decolonisation, many countries also held multiparty elections, bringing leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Leopold Senghor and Jomo Kenyatta to power.

Yet, after independence, about half of all African countries reverted to military regimes, starting with the 1960 coup in the then Zaire, today Democratic Republic of Congo. More than twenty other countries fashioned one-party regimes (often with a nominal socialist ideology) holding non-competitive elections. The justification for doing so was that legal processes had been followed – such as constitutional review commissions and referenda – and that these changes were necessary to forge national unity in the interest of rapid economic development. Consequently, by the mid-1980s, forty-two out of forty-seven countries in Africa could be categorised as either military or single-party regimes. Only Botswana, Gambia and Mauritius continued with multiparty elections from independence.

The end of the Cold War marked the start of a rapid transformation. In just a few years, almost all the previously autocratic regimes started holding multiparty elections (Bratton and van de Walle 1997; Lindberg 2006). The proportion of countries holding multiparty polls jumped from just 25 per cent in 1988 to 84 per cent in 1994 (van Ham and Lindberg 2015). At present, forty-six of forty-nine countries on the continent (94 per cent) hold multiparty elections for national offices.