RFI’s year-ahead piece, republished by allAfrica, checked against what has happened since and what remains
Who Votes in Africa in 2026? A January Roundup Lists Uganda, Benin, Ethiopia, Zambia and the Gambia in December, Read in Late October
RFI’s year-ahead piece, republished by allAfrica, checked against what has happened since and what remains
By Jungle Pussy, poet, Lagos to London
Friday, Flat, Radio Low
Dear diary, Melissa Chemam of Radio France Internationale wrote a year-ahead guide, republished by allAfrica on 23 January 2026, listing who goes to the polls in Africa this year. It is nine months old. Some of its elections have happened, some are still ahead, and some it flagged as unlikely. I read it in late October as a checklist.
I give it as it stands. I have not checked each election against later reports, except Zambia, which has its own entry.
Already Past
The guide says Uganda voted on 15 January, with President Yoweri Museveni winning a seventh term amid criticism of widespread repression. It lists a presidential election in the Republic of the Congo on 22 March, with President Denis Sassou Nguesso, 82, as the ruling party’s candidate, and in Benin on 12 April, where President Patrice Talon was not seeking a third term and Romuald Wadagni faced Paul Hounkpe. It lists Ethiopia on 1 June and Zambia on 13 August.
I do not know the results of most of those, and I will not guess.
Still Ahead
The Gambia has a presidential election on 5 December, and South Sudan a general election in December, the guide says. I have not checked whether either date has held, and recommend a current source. South Sudan in particular is an election whose date is the subject of repeated doubt, in my general reading, and I note that as a reason to check and not as a claim.
The same caution applies to Libya, which the guide said experts thought a general election was very unlikely.
Concerns Raised
The guide raised concerns about political inclusion and institutional independence across the continent following votes in Cameroon, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau and Cote d’Ivoire in 2025, and about repression in Uganda and Ethiopia, restrictive electoral reforms in Benin, and the critics’ view of Zambia’s seat expansion. It attributes its quoted material to unnamed experts and to the African Elections Project, run by Penplusbytes.
These are the guide’s concerns and its sources’ concerns, not mine, and I hold them at that distance.
A Poet’s Reading
I read lists of elections the way other people read lists of storms. They show where the weather is, not what it will do. I have family in more than one of these places, and a list never captures that.
I would rather read one poem from a country than twenty paragraphs of forecasts, and I would rather read both than neither.
The Nineteenth Century Footnote
From general knowledge, and not from the guide: the borders of many African states were drawn in the nineteenth century, and the arguments about them are part of the continent’s politics. I mention it because the lists above are lists of states with histories, and because I came to this subject through the century’s literature. I have not attempted to summarise what is a huge field.
Please read a real historian on it.
The Other View
The guide is cautious and critical. Governments named in it would likely say their elections were legitimate, and some defenders would argue the guide, written from Paris, underplays progress. The guide quotes none of them, and I do not invent them. A reader wanting balance should read local and regional reporting in addition to this.
A diary is only one shelf in the library.
Night
The radio is low. The list is long. The year is nearly over.
Goodnight, diary. Check the dates.
A Note on Dates
The guide was published in January and the world has moved on for nine months. A fresh reader should treat every scheduled date in it as a plan and not as a fact, and the ones in the future as the ones most likely to have changed.
Open Mic
On the Tube I read the comic papers, because the briefing notes are in my other bag. This week the big joke was property: Manila News on slow condo sales in Cebu, the London Prat on retirees asked for character references (it is at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and Bohiney on a realtor with unsellable beachfront listings. Exaggeration all the way down, but anchored to a real market story. More at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Diarist note: Jungle Pussy is a house diarist character created for this network, a poet writing from London with roots in Lagos. She is not any real person or performer of a similar name, and any resemblance is coincidental. Her opinions are a character’s, and where a claim comes from a government, an electoral body or a single report, the diary says so.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try The Daily Mash, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/