The 2026 African elections are marked by fraud, repression, and growing disenchantment. Leaders like the one in Burkina Faso are already calling for democracy to be forgotten, while military coups become normalized. For citizens, the lack of food, water, and education makes any regime that promises order attractive, even if it's at gunpoint.
Electoral technology: between broken ballot boxes and phantom voter rolls 🗳️
Electronic voting systems promised transparency, but in several countries they are used to manipulate results. Without maintenance or audits, machines fail or record votes from deceased individuals. Added to this is state digital surveillance, which identifies and represses the opposition. Technology, far from liberating, becomes a more efficient control tool than manual fraud.
Democracy: the product no one wants to buy 🛒
It turns out that democracy is like that expensive appliance that promises wonders but never works properly. African citizens, tired of pressing the vote button and receiving power outages, have decided that a soldier with a machete at least guarantees that the corner store won't be looted. Freedom of speech is all well and good, but hunger doesn't understand speeches.