The African Union and Election-Related Conflicts in Africa:An Assessment and Recommendations

Abstract

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of violent election related conflicts in Africa. The year 2008 alone saw Zimbabwe, Kenya and Anjouan/Comoros at some stage of the election conflict spectrum. The African Union (AU), as the continental broker, has often arrived at the scenes rather late and without much coercive authority to enforce its prescriptions. The AU has the responsibility for ensuring that democracy flourishes through electoral processes and has an extensive normative framework that is scattered in a number of protocols. African leaders have now consolidated many of these in the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG). On the 16th of January 2012, Cameroon became the 15th Member State to complete the ratification process. This meant that on the 15th of February 2012, the ACDEG would finally come into force after a painfully slow ratification process. Recently, one of Africa's leading scholars, Ali Mazrui declared that: "Most of...