In Case You Missed It: 12/26/16 — 1/2/17

Reuters

Gam­bia Yahya Jam­meh attends the ple­nary ses­sion of the Africa-South Amer­i­ca Sum­mit on Mar­gari­ta Island

This week’s most impor­tant head­lines out of and about Africa.

In this week’s news, pol­i­tics take cen­ter stage in the African con­ti­nent. Elec­tions in The Gam­bia and Ghana are being final­ized and a look ahead to Zim­bab­we in 2018. 

Elec­tion Results in The Gambia

Gam­bian Pres­i­dent Yahya Jam­meh sur­prised near­ly the entire world when he acknowl­edged defeat in this year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. How­ev­er, it did not take him long to return back to form after he then came out and said that he will reject all results of the elec­tion.  Fur­ther­more, he is call­ing for a new elec­tion to be held. 

The Gam­bia has not had a smooth trans­fer of pow­er since inde­pen­dence from Britain in 1965. Yahya Jam­meh has been at the helm of this small West African nation for 22 years after grab­bing pow­er dur­ing a coup attempt in 1994. Dur­ing his rule Jam­meh has con­sis­tent­ly faced poor human rights accu­sa­tions from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. In fact, the leader declared that The Gam­bia was now to be an Islam­ic repub­lic in 2015 claim­ing that the coun­try needs to move away from its colo­nial history. 

Pres­i­dent- elect Adama Bar­row has vowed to take office Jan­u­ary 18, 2017 and is encour­ag­ing Jam­meh to accept the results of the peo­ple. It has also been report­ed that Bar­row is fear­ing for his life right now. Oth­er region­al coun­tries are also work­ing towards find­ing a peace­ful resolution. 

Most recent­ly the chair­man of Gambia’s elec­toral com­mis­sion Alieu Momar Njai has fled the coun­try after receiv­ing sub­stan­tial death threats. He was the one who con­firmed the defeat of Pres­i­dent Jammeh. 

The results of this elec­tion mat­ter because it could set a new prece­dent in African coun­tries that oppo­si­tion par­ties can have a voice in elec­toral process­es since free speech and polit­i­cal dis­sent have long been not avail­able to many groups across Africa. 

Elec­tion Results in Ghana

The Elec­toral Com­mis­sion of Ghana has declared Nana Addo Dankwa Aku­fo-Addo as the Pres­i­dent-Elect who comes from the New Patri­ot­ic Par­ty (NPP). After three attempts, the new leader hopes to con­tin­ue with poli­cies that exem­pli­fy democ­ra­cy on the African con­ti­nent. He defeat­ed the out­go­ing John Mahama of the Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Congress. 

The coun­try has had a lega­cy of sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment changes how­ev­er there is a strong his­to­ry of peace­ful elec­tions and tran­si­tions of pow­er as well. 

Ghana has long been a strong region­al econ­o­my. How­ev­er, many in Accra point to the econ­o­my as being the main issue of con­cern in this elec­tion com­bined with a high unem­ploy­ment rate. 

Sup­port­ers of Mr. Mahama have expressed con­cern about Nana Addo Dankwa Aku­fo-Addo being able to ful­fill most of his cam­paign promis­es. He does believe he has a duty to move the coun­try for­ward after receiv­ing this high con­fi­dence in him.

2018 Elec­tions in Zimbabwe

92 year old Pres­i­dent Robert Mugabe will once again run for office in the coun­tries elec­tions in 2018. He is com­ing off win­ning elec­tions in 2013 that were crit­i­cized with vot­ing fraud and oth­er allegations. 

The rul­ing ZANU-PF par­ty has pledged its sup­port and even con­sid­er­ing mea­sures that would allow Mr. Mugabe to rule for life. How­ev­er, the par­ty has also been try­ing to han­dle inter­nal fac­tions and dis­agree­ments which Mr. Mugabe has also pub­licly acknowledged. 

Despite the sup­port from many, he is fac­ing seri­ous prob­lems in the coun­try that has been plagu­ing him in recent years. Most notably the econ­o­my has come to a crash­ing halt. This year the coun­try has intro­duced bond notes into cir­cu­la­tion due to sig­nif­i­cant cash short­ages. Many are ner­vous this will lead to hyper­in­fla­tion sim­i­lar to what was seen in 2009 after adopt­ing the U.S. dol­lar and South African rand. Harare believes that there will be $75 mil­lion worth of bond notes in cir­cu­la­tion by the end of this year. The only chance that this will work is if the peo­ple put trust in the mon­ey itself. Oth­er­wise the mon­ey will essen­tial­ly be worthless. 

Robert Mugabe has said pub­licly that he intends to live to be 100 years old.