Legal reforms threaten to erode democracy in Africa
Rather than dismantling constitutions or abandoning elections altogether (as Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has recently proposed), incumbents are increasingly rewriting the rules that govern how. . .
Rather than dismantling constitutions or abandoning elections altogether (as Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has recently proposed), incumbents are increasingly rewriting the rules that govern how executive power is acquired, retained and challenged. Three related developments stand out:the redesign of constitutional systems to weaken the accountability of executive power, for example by removing direct presidential elections and extending electoral timetables;the use of constitutional and legal mechanisms to prolong executive rule by removing presidential term limits or, in the case of military governments, using transitional charters and delayed elections to turn temporary administrations into more durable systems of rule; andthe manipulation of new NGO, cybercrime, public order and national security legislation to raise the legal costs of dissent while presenting restrictions on political freedoms as the routine application of the law — a process often described as ‘lawfare’. Taken together, these developments reinforce one another:constitutional reforms weaken citizens’ ability to choose their leaders;legal changes reduce the likelihood that incumbents will leave office; andnew legislation constrains the media, civil society and opposition organisations most capable of exposing abuses of power or mobilising public resistance. Their cumulative effect is to insulate executive authority from popular pressure while maintaining the appearance of constitutional government. Weakening executive accountabilityZimbabwe’s recent Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Act, promulgated in July, abolishes the direct popular election of the president, providing instead that, from 2030, future presidents will be elected by a joint sitting of parliament. Zimbabweans will continue to vote directly for members of parliament and local representatives, but no longer separately for the head of state. The Act also moves Zimbabwe from a five-year to a seven-year electoral cycle, on the basis of which the ruling ZANU-PF party intends to postpone the next elections from 2028 to 2030, and extend the mandates of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, parliament and local authorities by two years, with seven-year presidential, parliamentary and local government terms thereafter. Beyond the content of the reforms, the reform process itself was highly controversial, with opposition parties, civil society groups and legal bodies reporting media censorship, restrictions on public debate and intimidation during public hearings. Zimbabwe’s reforms are no isolated phenomenon but form part of an emerging constitutional model. Angola’s 2010 Constitution abolished separate presidential elections, providing that the leader of the party list winning the parliamentary election automatically becomes president. Togo’s 2024 constitutional reforms similarly abolished direct presidential elections, transferring executive authority to a president of the Council of Ministers designated by the parliamentary majority. Although differing in their constitutional design, these reforms share a common feature: they remove the direct electoral link between citizens and the individual exercising executive power. The political attraction of this model is demonstrated by its operation in practice. Direct presidential elections require incumbents to secure a nationwide personal mandate and expose them to shifts in national public opinion. By contrast, parliamentary majorities can be more readily sustained through patronage, the use of state resources, constituency boundary manipulation, malapportionment and long-established local political networks. In Angola’s 2022 general election, for example, the MPLA only won 51% of the vote, but secured a greater majority of parliamentary seats (56%). Similarly, in Togo’s first legislative elections under the new constitutional arrangements, the ruling Union for the Republic (UNIR) party won 83 of the 91 parliamentary seats, enabling it to determine the country’s executive leadership. By linking executive office to these often durable — and in some cases manufactured — legislative majorities, rather than to a direct presidential mandate, such reforms reduce the likelihood that declining public support for an incumbent leader will translate into executive turnover. Presidents for life?A second trend is the use of constitutional and legal mechanisms to remove fixed points of executive succession. According to forthcoming research by Nic Cheeseman and Marie-Eve Desrosiers, there were 47 attempts to evade presidential term limits in 31 African countries between 1990 and 2024, 77% of which succeeded. Constitutional amendment has remained the dominant method, although leaders have also adopted new constitutions, secured favorable judicial interpretations or installed placeholder presidents to retain power. Further attempts have occurred in 2025 and 2026, most notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In June 2026, parliament approved legislation establishing the legal framework for a referendum on a new constitution, although the bill has not yet been promulgated by President Felix Tshisekedi and no referendum date has been announced. Although Tshisekedi has insisted he will only seek a third term if this is the ‘will of the people’, the government has already outlined the mechanism through which this would be achieved, arguing that adopting a new constitution would bypass the existing constitution’s prohibition on revising presidential term limits, effectively resetting the presidential clock and allowing Tshisekedi to seek another mandate after 2028 (or indeed, 2030, as an election delay is also being mooted). The opposition rejects this interpretation as an attempt to circumvent Article 220, which entrenches the two-term limit as an immutable feature of the constitution. The proposal has become one of the country’s main political fault lines, uniting previously divided opposition parties under the Article 64 Coalition (C64) and triggering protests in Kinshasa, which police used tear gas to disperse. Military governments are using related mechanisms to turn supposedly temporary transitions into prolonged executive rule. In Guinea, a constitution approved by referendum in September 2025 extended presidential terms from five to seven years, strengthened presidential authority and permitted members of the ruling junta to contest future elections. Burkina Faso’s amended Transition Charter replaced the promised 2024 return to civilian rule with a further five-year transition beginning in July 2024 and permits junta leader Ibrahim Traore to contest the eventual election. Mali’s revised Transitional Charter grants Assimi Goita a five-year presidential mandate, renewable without a fixed limit until the country is deemed pacified, while allowing Goita, ministers and members of the transitional legislature to contest future elections. Niger’s Charter of the Refoundation similarly established a five-year transition under Abdourahamane Tiani, replacing the initial promise of a short interregnum with a formal framework for extended junta rule. These measures differ in form but have the same effect: they remove or indefinitely postpone the moment at which executive power must change hands. In elected systems, this is achieved by resetting, extending or abolishing presidential term limits; under military governments, it is achieved by repeatedly revising transitional charters, delaying elections and allowing coup leaders to contest the eventual vote. In both cases, temporary incumbency is converted into legally protected long-term rule, creating the conditions for presidents — and junta leaders — to remain in power indefinitely. Legislating against accountabilityAlongside constitutional reform, African governments are increasingly using ordinary legislation to weaken political accountability. Rather than relying primarily on overt repression, governments are embedding restrictions in three broad areas of legislation, namely laws regulating:civil society organisations;the digital sphere; andpublic order and national security. Together, these measures increase the legal and administrative costs of political opposition while allowing restrictions on fundamental freedoms to be presented as the routine application of the rule of law. According to CIVICUS, a global civil society organization, restrictive NGO or ‘foreign agent’ legislation has become one of the fastest-growing forms of restrictive legislation globally. Across Africa, governments have increasingly expanded state oversight of civil society organizations by tightening registration requirements, restricting access to foreign funding and granting broader powers to suspend or dissolve organizations. Ethiopia’s 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation provided an early model for this approach, while Zimbabwe’s Private Voluntary Organizations Amendment Act is among the most significant recent examples. In 2025 alone, CIVICUS documented new or proposed restrictions affecting civil society organizations in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Zambia, while Benin revised its NGO law without consulting civil society. These measures have disproportionately affected organizations involved in election observation, anti-corruption work, human rights advocacy and democratic reform. This process has been consolidated by the rapid expansion of cybercrime and digital regulation. According to the Digital Rights Alliance Africa, eight of the nine countries covered in its 2025 regional assessment (Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia) have standalone cybercrime legislation, while civil society organisations in all nine concluded that these laws unjustifiably restrict freedom of expression and privacy despite constitutional protections of these rights. Relatedly, countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Togo and Zambia have adopted broad offences relating to the dissemination of false information, offensive communications or threats to public order, alongside expanded surveillance powers and wider state authority over digital communications. These measures have significantly increased governments’ ability to investigate journalists, prosecute online critics and regulate political debate. The last decade has also seen continued use of public order, counter-terrorism and national security legislation to regulate political activity. Across countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and the Sahel states, legislation justified in terms of maintaining public order, combating terrorism or protecting national security has been used to restrict opposition mobilization, media reporting and civil society activity, while ‘false information’ offenses have provided an additional legal basis for prosecuting government critics. Although these laws address different policy areas, they perform a common political function. Rather than prohibiting opposition outright, they make it more difficult for journalists, civil society organisations and opposition parties to expose corruption, mobilise public opinion or challenge executive authority. The cumulative effect is to shift political contestation from overt repression towards legal regulation, allowing governments to constrain accountability while maintaining the appearance of governing through the rule of law. Entrenched backsliding?The outlook for these trends is shaped by an increasingly permissive international environment, so African governments seeking to consolidate executive power face fewer external constraints than in previous decades. Notably, the growing political, economic and security engagement of authoritarian partners — particularly China, Russia and the Gulf states — has reduced dependence on traditional European and North American donors while providing alternative sources of finance, military assistance and diplomatic support. At the same time, many Western governments have become less willing to prioritise democracy promotion, increasingly subordinating concerns over constitutional governance and political rights to questions of security cooperation, migration management, access to critical minerals and geopolitical competition. As a result, the costs of deliberately weakening democratic institutions have declined, making further constitutional and legal reforms to entrench executive power more likely. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that some of these developments represent a step change rather than simply another episode of democratic backsliding. Unlike more incremental restrictions on political freedoms, constitutional reforms that redesign how executive power is acquired and retained fundamentally reshape the rules of political competition. Replacing direct presidential elections with indirect selection, removing or resetting presidential term limits and institutionalising prolonged military transitions reduce the likelihood of future executive turnover while making subsequent restrictions easier to introduce. History demonstrates that constitutional recovery remains possible. Guinea’s 2010 Constitution restored presidential term limits after their earlier abolition, Chad reinstated limits in 2018, while Gabon’s 2024 Constitution reintroduced a two-term limit following the 2023 coup. Yet these examples also illustrate why democratic recovery is becoming less common. In 2020, Guinean President Alpha Conde used another constitutional revision to reset presidential term limits and secure a third term, which provided a significant part of the backdrop for a subsequent 2021 coup that toppled Conde. Similarly, having restored presidential term limits in 2018, Chad abolished them again in 2024, only six years later. Formal constitutional reversals therefore remain possible, but they have become increasingly fragile as governments adopt more sophisticated methods of entrenching executive power. Institutional strengthThis trajectory is not universal. Several African democracies continue to demonstrate that executive accountability can be preserved through robust constitutional institutions and genuine electoral competition. Ghana remains the clearest example, having sustained multiple peaceful transfers of power while respecting presidential term limits and maintaining a vibrant media and civil society. Botswana’s 2024 election demonstrated that even a party that had governed continuously since independence could be removed through the ballot box, while Namibia has continued to observe constitutional term limits and orderly presidential succession. Meanwhile, Senegal’s Constitutional Council prevented President Macky Sall from postponing the 2024 presidential election, preserving the constitutional timetable and enabling a peaceful transfer of power. These cases suggest that, where constitutional rules are respected, courts remain independent and elections remain genuinely competitive, democratic accountability can continue to constrain executive power even in an increasingly challenging regional and international environment. This piece was originally published in the Daily Brief. To find out more about the Daily Brief, clickhere.