Elections in Africa are often marred by irregularities and socio-political tensions. As part of the AHEAD Africa project focusing on the many aspects of the electoral cycle in Africa, AfricTivistes has issued a form to map African civil society initiatives linked to electoral processes on the continent since 2010. 

In recent years in Africa, electoral processes, like the foundations of democracy, have come up against a number of dysfunctions that often generate tensions that can lead to crises before or after elections. These include institutional capture, vote manipulation, lack of voter education, voter exclusion and cyber threats that compromise the integrity of elections.

In response, civil society is working to strengthen the transparency and integrity of electoral processes through a range of innovative and unifying initiatives. These citizens’ initiatives are making a significant contribution to strengthening electoral democracies on the continent. 

In this context, AfricTivistes is identifying and mapping these initiatives through a questionnaire in order to set up a database to provide information on the nature of these initiatives and their areas of intervention throughout the electoral cycle.

This mapping will also demonstrate the active commitment of African civil society to transparent, reliable and peaceful electoral processes.

The specific objectives of this documentation are to :

• Identify African civil society initiatives on electoral processes since 2010;
• Map these initiatives to demonstrate their transformative power and their capacity to mobilise;
• Promote more than 100 initiatives in response to the election issue in Africa;
• Facilitate the networking between initiatives in order to create a best practice network in citizen engagement and participation.

It should be recalled that as part of AHEAD Africa, AfricTivistes is promoting digital innovation and civic technology (civic tech) for transparent and democratic electoral processes across the continent, with a focus on : 

• Online one-stop electoral portal 
• African Election Lab 
• Election Hackathon 
• Subgrant and support mechanism for electoral observation initiatives  

The project was officially launched on Saturday 20th July in Accra, Ghana, under the theme “Advancing Electoral Integrity through Citizen Engagement”. 

Co-funded by the European Union, the consortium for the pan-African AHEAD Africa project includes AfricTivistes, Democracy Reporting International (DRI), the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) and the African Election Observation Network (AfEONET),  the Electoral Support Network for Southern Africa (ESN-SA), the East and Horn of Africa Election Observers Network (E-HORN) and the West African Election Observers Network (WAEON), as well as national networks of civil society organisations on elections.

The deadline for submitting your initiative is November 15th, 2024. 

Kindly note that the data collected as part of this mapping exercise will be treated with the utmost confidentiality.

For more information, please contact: info@africtivistes.org.