I do not know which ward I reside in or which party holds it. I may be able to speak for hours about the upper echelons of our political society—presidents and parliament, ministers and national opposition leaders—but I am completely clueless about the government that is nearest to my everyday life.

Ignorance is not an excuse, but national politics seems much more enticing. Local government’s gritty day-to-day decisions, however, have the greatest influence on citizens’ lives. “Local government provides basic services: water, sanitation, refuse; the most basic and in many cases the only quantifiable and unambiguous deliverables of government,” said Paul Berkowitz, analyst at South African local government consultants Citydex and local politics writer for the Daily Maverick. “You could argue that they’re called basic services because they’re the most basic building blocks of government.”

Unfortunately for South Africa’s 19-year-old democracy, I am not alone in my ignorance. If media attention can be taken as a proxy for public interest—it cannot always—South Africans are not concerned with local politics.

Hardly a month goes by without a by-election being held somewhere in South Africa. On Wednesday April 24th by-elections were held in 19 municipal wards across all provinces in the country. Though it was the biggest democratic exercise held in South Africa since the local elections in 2011, it passed with barely a whisper from the national media.

The sum total of online coverage the next day was a paltry couple of round-ups from the South African Press Association, reproduced without prominence on the country’s main English-language news sites, Independent Online, News24 and TimesLive; a reproduction of an African National Congress press release on Politicsweb; and a summary of each ward’s results on the Daily Maverick.

This is not surprising. National politics tend to dominate public interest and media attention, and this makes good sense: it is more glamorous; easier to understand (a cast of dozens rather than thousands of local councillors); and by definition it appeals to a broader, countrywide audience.

But this does not mean that the South African media has stopped reporting local politics. While acknowledging the generally poor local elections coverage, Yale University’s Gwyneth McClendon (whose doctorate focused on local councillors in South Africa) argues that the media pay attention to other local issues.

“I have actually been struck by the degree to which other local-level phenomena (so-called service delivery protests, audits of municipalities, the take-over of failing municipalities) garner press attention in South Africa,” Ms McClendon told Africa in Fact. “Even if by-elections are not always widely covered and even if turnout in local
elections is lower than in national ones, the media demonstrates some sense that local failures in service delivery matter a great deal to ordinary citizens.” 

The relatively low turnout at April’s polls also reveals South Africans’ lack of interest (or is it lack of faith?) in local politics.

The 35.3% overall turnout, typical for by-elections, is a steep drop from the 57.8% turnout reported by the Independent Electoral Commission in the 2011 municipal elections. Neither figure compares favourably with the 76.3% turnout of registered voters in the 2009 national elections.

Political actors, in comparison, are well attuned to the importance of local politics. A central plank of the Democratic Alliance’s strategy to challenge the ruling African National Congress is to focus on smaller, winnable electoral battles in city wards and provinces rather than to aim for a national victory, which is currently out of reach. This approach paid dividends this time round, with the party substantially increasing its share of the vote (although not winning any new seats) in most of the city wards it contested. 

Service delivery protests have proliferated in the last few years. In Zamdela, a township outside Sasolburg in the Free State province, hundreds of people gathered in early April 2013 to protest against Mayor Brutus Mahlaku, alleging corruption in his department. Even when service delivery protests target national bodies—such as the presidency, ministries or the ruling party—these are often after trying and failing to get a response from local councillors.

“Service delivery protests are often quite focused and quite rational,” Mr Berkowitz said. “When service delivery protests occur it’s more likely to be the end of the process than the beginning. A common issue is that complaints are repeatedly ignored by councillors—only then do protests call for the involvement of higher government.”

Clearly, politics at the local level can be captivating. Those of us who remain disengaged are missing out—and perhaps letting this distort our perceptions of the bigger picture.

If South Africa wants an example of what happens when local government fails, it need look no further than its northern neighbour, Zimbabwe, where long-entrenched corruption and patronage have essentially wiped out the ability of most local authorities to deliver any kind of services.

Tawanda Zinyama is a University of Zimbabwe lecturer and Precious Shumba heads a Harare residents’ association. In an op-ed for ZimEye, an online news site, they blamed the national government for promoting councillors based on their party loyalty and not on their qualifications and experience: “The current crop of elected councillors has been found wanting in all facets of local government, be it corporate governance issues and quality service delivery.”

Zimbabwean journalist Ray Ndlovu argues that local government positions remain an area of contestation between President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and opposition parties, although not quite in the democratic fashion that either of Zimbabwe’s constitutions envisaged.

To illustrate his point, Mr Ndlovu referred Africa in Fact to the cases of Brian James and Lionel Denecker, elected councillors for Mutare and Gwanda respectively, and aligned with Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Last year Ignatius Chombo, the minister of local government, urban and rural development and a Zanu-PF member, accused the two councillors of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption, and suspended both from their positions. “Under the pretext of promoting accountability in local governance, Zanu-PF ministers are pushing their own party agenda in local government,” Mr Ndlovu said.

Zimbabwe’s new constitution calls for the national government to devolve some power to local authorities after ten years. For instance, now the winning party in each province will choose the governor. Kenya, however, while starting from a similar position to Zimbabwe—after violent and contested elections in 2007—took this a whole lot further in its new constitution.

“Local elected officials have had little influence on Kenyans’ everyday lives,” explained political analyst Abraham Rugo from the Institute for Economic Affairs. “Power has been centred at the national level with the president and cabinet playing a key role.” All 175 of Kenya’s local authorities were answerable to the local government minister, effectively nullifying the division between local and national politics. It was a system that failed, marked again by endemic corruption, patronage and mismanagement.

Recognising this cock-up, Kenya’s constitution drafters chucked out the whole system. They replaced it with a completely new set of local government institutions and gave significant power to regional governors. How much of this authority will trickle down to the new local government bodies remains to be seen.

The idea was to create more democratic and stronger local institutions that were independent of the central government, and to explicitly define the different roles of each local and national institution.

But still—perhaps daunted by having to vote for different positions on six different ballots—Kenyans showed only secondary interest in local politics in this year’s general elections. “With the just-concluded elections, the focus was again on the president and on governors of the devolved units,” Mr Rugo said. “Very little attention was on members of county assemblies, partly due to perceptions that they are just as weak as councillors (from the previous, discarded local government system).”

These examples provide several lessons. First, local politics in Africa is important. As exemplified by Kenya and Zimbabwe’s new constitutions, the trend to transfer national power to local authorities is increasing. “All politics is local,” US Congressman Tip O’Neill famously said. He is still right.

Second, local politics does not get the attention it deserves—either from citizens or the media. This creates citizens that are chronically disengaged from local government activities. Why? Maybe they do not realise or understand the powers that are vested in local authorities. Or perhaps citizens are disenchanted with local government performance.

The danger is that local officials get away with lower levels of scrutiny and accountability. “Research from elsewhere in the world does suggest that, when turnout is low and when media attention is low in local elections, elected local officials end up not being particularly accountable to most of the municipality, focusing instead on those supporters who did vote,” Ms McClendon explained. “So increasing attention to both main local elections and to by-elections should be a concern in South Africa, as it should be in most multi-level democracies.”

Third, national politics gets too much attention. Of course the head of state and his cabinet are crucial to the running of the country, but there is a tendency in media and public discourse—of which I have been guilty on several occasions—to conflate the state with an individual. Even if Jacob Zuma or Robert Mugabe or Uhuru Kenyatta were to issue a decree demanding that all refuse should be collected immediately—this order is only as effective as the local government body responsible for this task.

Understanding how the state works, therefore, requires a working knowledge of its local politics too. This is particularly true in Africa’s weak states, where central government control might not extend much past the capital city (think Central African Republic, or Somalia; Somali politics makes little sense looked at only from the prism of the interim administration in Mogadishu).

Fourth, change is easier to execute at a local level. In South Africa, for example, the sheer inertia generated by the ANC’s long history of popular support should keep it in the Union Buildings for another decade at least. But as April’s by-elections demonstrated, opposition parties can successfully challenge its power on a ward-by- ward basis. Smaller parties such as the Pan-Africanist Congress and independent candidates who managed to take over wards previously held by the ruling party won the by-elections for the most part. They did not campaign on national development agendas but specifically on local issues, which clearly resonated with the voters.

Taking this into account, I rectified the embarrassing gap in my knowledge of local politics. For the record, I live in Johannesburg’s Ward 117 and my local councillor is Tim Truluck from the Democratic Alliance. From now on, I will be keeping a close eye on Mr Truluck. Find out who your local politicians are and do the same.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 76, is currently serving his third five-year mandate since first being elected in 1999. But since 2005 rumours have swirled that he is suffering from cancer, claims the regime denies. Algeria is a country where power divisions are very complex. The president, along with the Department of Intelligence and Security, better known by its French initials, DRS, are known as “le pouvoir” (“the power”). The president’s absence does not necessarily create a power vacuum: many analysts allege that real power rests with the DRS.

“Much [not everything] depends on whether or not Bouteflika will run again,” claimed Baya Kara, a former Algerian deputy of parliament and an elections expert. Algeria’s constitution limits neither the president’s age nor the number of terms, an amendment Mr Bouteflika engineered in November 2008. The rulebook stipulates, however, that the president’s health must enable him to carry out his duties, a provision that the rubber-stamping parliament has ignored for years.

“If Bouteflika runs, we will know the outcome of the elections beforehand,” Ms Kara added. “It would mean that Bouteflika would serve a fourth term as Algeria’s president.” If Mr Bouteflika does not run, the political field may widen because two of Algeria’s most important political figures, once considered likely presidential candidates for 2014, left politics earlier this year.

Ahmed Ouyahia, once a prime minister under Mr Bouteflika, was forced to resign on January 3rd 2013 from his position as secretary-general of the National Rally for Democracy (RND); then a few weeks later, on February 1st, Mr Bouteflika’s party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), fired Abdelaziz Belkhadem as the party’s secretary-general. Both parties form the ruling coalition.

Yet many analysts see their dismissals as a superficial regime strategy to prove that there is indeed political change. Their removals are designed to appease a citizenry
that is fed up with an old guard that has clung to power for decades. Mr Bouteflika has
been in power for nearly 14 years. General Muhammad Mediène, widely known as Toufiq, has directed the DRS for more than 20 years, making him the world’s longest-serving intelligence chief.

The patience of some senior political figures is also running thin. Recently, Ahmed Benbitour, a former prime minister and now a presidential candidate, openly challenged Mr Bouteflika and called for his retirement. Mr Benbitour insisted that political and electoral reforms have to start with a new president.

“In Algeria you cannot change the entire system of government without including the presidency,” he said during an interview with Al Jazeera on April 6th 2013. This confrontational stance has boosted his popularity ratings amongst Algerians, especially within elite circles, where many would like to see him as the president in future.

Though the political field appears to be more open, this could be another game of smoke and mirrors. Many observers question whether anything has changed in this North African nation. Algeria managed to resist the radical political transformation that swept its neighbours after the 2011 Arab spring. At the height of these mass protests, Mr Bouteflika announced the creation of a National Commission for Consultation on Political Reforms to launch constitutional changes while sidestepping more radical reforms. Though he promised to reform the electoral system, too, political pundits belittled this new body’s independence because the president appointed the commission’s three heads.

Despite this lack of independence, the commission has implemented some reforms. The interior ministry has accredited more political parties, suggesting greater plurality, at least superficially. Before the May 2012 elections, ten new political parties competed for the 462-seat lower house of parliament; the interior ministry accredited ten more parties before local elections held on November 29th 2012.

The commission also established two new electoral oversight bodies, the National Electoral Commission and a judiciary committee, which answer to the interior ministry. The commission has given women more elective offices as one-third of every list of elected officials must be women. Algeria’s lower house of parliament now includes 146 women, the highest number in the Arab world.

The judiciary committee’s main task is to ensure that the electoral process is legal. But many lawyers who are known to have close ties to the governing regime serve on this committee and compromise its independence.

Despite the two new electoral oversight bodies, the interior ministry still has the final say over elections. It is closely aligned to the DRS, considered one of the cruellest intelligence bodies in the world, infamous for allegedly committing severe human rights abuses, particularly during the Algerian civil war in the early 1990s.

Analysts such as Ms Kara question the government’s sincerity to implement real electoral reform. “The regime’s strategy of making the political scene appear more open is just getting more complex and elaborate,” she says. While Ms Kara lauds the introduction of two new electoral oversight bodies, she criticises their limited authority and impact.

The interior ministry permitted only 500 international election monitors to observe the 2012 parliamentary elections. The Carter Center, an American institute that monitors human rights, sent only two people. The Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) sent five pre-election assessors and seven long-term observers. Such limited size “did not permit the institute to cover a significant portion of Algeria’s 45,000 polling sites”, acknowledged NDI’s election observation report.

While the interior ministry permitted more political parties to participate in the elections, most could not get past the 7% vote requirement needed to win parliamentary seats. So though the campaign appeared to be more open, the incumbent ruling coalition—the FLN and the RND—won the parliamentary polls again, as well as the local elections held on November 29th 2012.

This restrictive electoral environment led to a foreseeably low voter turnout, indicating limited public faith in the elections. Algerian officials declared a final turnout of 43% during the parliamentary elections. However, 18.2% of ballots were deliberately spoiled, indicating a substantial protest vote. “Algerians showed that they want to vote but that there is no candidate they want to vote for,” Ms Kara said. “We don’t trust the electoral machinery.”

Three Islamist parties—the Movement of Society for Peace, the Islamic Renaissance Movement and the Movement for National Reform—cited electoral fraud, an allegation they have failed to prove. They boycotted parliament’s inaugural session on May 26th 2012.

Compared with neighbouring countries Tunisia and Morocco, Algeria’s Islamist parties have performed surprisingly poorly in elections. Yet many Algerians counter that their country’s “revolution” took place in the early 1990s, most importantly after the parliament’s lower house adopted a new electoral law that allowed more parties to contest future elections. This resulted in the licensing of over 20 new parties, including the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which won 188 seats in the first round of the 1991 general elections. (This party was poised to win the second round, but the regime cancelled the elections, which triggered Algeria’s civil war and the deaths of more than 150,000.)

The current electoral climate is much more restrictive and the interior ministry still holds an iron grip on the electoral process. Some people argue that the licensing of so many new parties was a government strategy to split the opposition vote and prevent parties from receiving the required 7% threshold to win a seat. In 1989, the reforms actually would have led to a real change, as they enabled an opposition party to win the first round.

But now “le pouvoir” is even more controlling. The regime monopolises the media and campaign advertising. Campaign financing is very controversial. “Officially, the money comes from declared sources derived from legal state subsidies,” explained Samir Hchicha, an Algerian activist. “But behind the scenes we strongly suspect that various government agencies are the ones providing the funding.”

If Mr Bouteflika were to run a fourth time, even his political opponents admit that he cannot be defeated. The national consultation commission is expected to propose more amendments to the electoral law. They are working without a deadline, however, and their deliberations are behind closed doors. Many expect a constitutional amendment that will establish a new post of vice-president.

With a new vice-president, Mr Bouteflika’s party could remain in power if the ailing president were to die while in office, à la Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

But for the moment, most political opponents are still focusing on whether or not Mr Bouteflika will run again in 2014. Even if he does not run, any real change is unlikely. “Le pouvoir” may pick a consensus candidate who does not question the state’s power structures. Algeria will face more of the same.

Just before 6am a few cars pull up to the entrance of a primary school, which has been turned into a polling station. Out pour several men and women, dressed in khaki flak jackets embroidered with “official election observer”. They are holding paper cups of coffee to ward off yawns and the morning chill.

The observers have come to witness Kenya’s fifth multiparty elections since 1991, but the first since the post-election violence of 2007, when 1,200 people died and hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes.

These March 4th elections also marked the first polls since the adoption of Kenya’s new constitution in 2010, which devolves more power to local government, paves the way for land reform and includes a bill of rights. After extensive electoral and legal reforms, these elections were Kenya’s most complex and challenging to date: in addition to the presidency, voters were asked to mark five other ballots for members of the general as well as county-level assemblies.

Election observation is crucial to the electoral process because it “boosts public confidence and contributes to the integrity of the elections”, said Felix Odhiambo Owuor, country director of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA). “Multiparty elections [in Africa] have only been around for two decades. African laws are suited to one-party dictators. They had an unfair advantage, so it became necessary to observe elections.”

This year the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) accredited 21,554 domestic observers and 1,834 international observers (as well as 6,327 local and international journalists). These election observers monitored contests in Kenya’s 47 counties. The Elections Observation Group (ELOG), a coalition of smaller Kenyan organisations, with more than 7,000 observers in all 290 constituencies, had the largest presence on the ground.

An observer mission’s main goal is to verify that the elections are free and fair, or in the case of many African elections, at least credible. Ideally, long-term observers start monitoring months before the election takes place, witnessing voter registration and education, the procurement, design and distribution of election materials, the party nomination process and the campaign. Short-term observers arrive just before election day to watch the campaign’s last stages, election day and the tallying of results.

Observers from the Commonwealth, the European Union, the African Union (AU), the United States-based Carter Center as well as a coalition representing the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) arrived in Kenya a month or two before the election.

Long-term election observation is vital as it can shed light on pre-election processes and how they can be improved. For example, with regard to Kenya’s March 4th elections, “the party nomination stage was very chaotic,” said Mr Owuor. “In some cases that was the election.”

ELOG began observing the election run-up in June 2012, nearly a year before the election, said Eustace Kinyua, ELOG’s long-term observer coordinator. Unlike some international observers who hesitate to criticise, the local observers made recommendations to the IEBC “along the way”, he added.

On election day, observers watch the actual voting from the opening of the polls to their closing. They verify the election materials at the polling stations, paying particular attention to the ballots, ballot boxes and voter registration lists. Observers make sure the environment at the polling station is neutral and free from outside influence; a setting where voters feel their privacy and security is protected. They also keep an eye out for any signs of violence.

The observers remain until the final and official tally is announced, closely examining the vote counting process. Often election observer missions provide preliminary reports a few days after the elections and more comprehensive ones months afterwards.

After the observers verified that the election materials were in place at the downtown Nairobi primary school/polling station, the gates opened punctually at 6am. The voters swarmed in and ran chaotically around the school field looking for signs indicating where they should vote according to their surname. But the signs were hard to find and mass confusion reigned. Angola’s elections in December 2012 were much better organised, said an AU observer snidely. “They had iPads at the gate telling people exactly which stream to get into.”

Later in the morning, the observers noted that voters looked puzzled by the colour of the ballots, which the IEBC had designed to match the corresponding coloured ballot boxes. The ballots and the tops of the plastic ballot boxes were very light pastel—pink, green, blue, white, beige and yellow.

The blue and yellow were very pale and easily confused with the beige and white. The IEBC deliberately chose pastel colours to avoid stronger orange and red tones, which the main parties use to identify themselves. But this created other problems: if a voter dropped a ballot into the wrong coloured box, officials rejected that vote.

Voters in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, marked their ballots in tents, bus terminals and schools. Electricity in Kenya is scarce and uneven. By late morning, the batteries of the computers holding the electronic voter registry had discharged completely and could not be recharged. Election officials verified voter identity the old-fashioned way by using a large printed book with names and photos. As the day wore on and the sun faded, the colours of the ballots became even more indistinguishable in the half-light of schoolrooms.

Most polling stations closed at 5pm (unless voters were still waiting to cast their ballots) and the counting began. In a dark Kibera classroom, lit only by gaslight, election observers sat on school desks and watched the unsealing of the ballot boxes. An IEBC official unfolded each paper ballot, one at a time, and announced the voter’s preference. Observers, party representatives and IEBC officials wrote down the results.

In a corner, an IEBC official tried to SMS the results to the regional voting centre without success. That night, Kenya’s much-lauded cellphone networks jammed and the high-tech electronic tallying system failed. The election officials yawned with exhaustion. Their day, which began at about 5am, ended shortly before midnight.

Technical and other problems troubled the 2013 Kenyan elections. Procurement of the biometric voter registration kits—used to create a new electronic electoral roll—took longer than expected, resulting in a short one-month registration period between November 19th and December 18th 2012. Critics claimed that this shortened registration period excluded 3.7m eligible voters.

On election day, the much-vaunted electronic system failed: in addition to jammed cellular networks and laptops without power, many passwords did not work, making it impossible for IEBC officials to verify voter identities. The data servers were also overloaded and officials could not transmit the results via SMS. This delayed counting and raised suspicions that the election might again descend into chaos and violence. The confusion around the pastel-coloured ballot papers contributed to a high number of rejected ballots.

The international observer missions released preliminary statements a few days after the poll. All agreed that the election was non-violent and satisfactory. “Kenya’s general elections were characterised by a huge society-wide push for peaceful, transparent and credible elections,” according to the EU’s preliminary statement.

One month after the election, on April 4th, the Carter Center released its postelection statement. “In spite of serious shortcomings in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s management of technology and tabulation of final election results, the paper-based procedure for counting and tallying presented enough guarantees to preserve the expression of the will of Kenyan voters.”

Kenneth Flottman, an independent elections consultant, noted that not one of the observer missions referred to the elections as “free and fair” in their preliminary or post-election reports. “Holding back on calling the election ‘free and fair’ reflects the reality of the known problems with the election,” Mr Flottman said. “At its most crass, this is a way to say that the government in power cheated some, but the opposition probably would have lost anyway.”

He conceded that “there is a tendency to apply lower standards to achieve a ‘free and fair’ election in Africa compared to other regions [of the world]. If anything, this makes the decision not to apply the label to this election in Kenya more noteworthy.”

David Pottie, associate director of the Carter Center’s democracy programme, contested this view. “It isn’t that African elections are held to a different (higher or lower) standard than countries elsewhere in the world,” Mr Pottie said in an e-mail. “Rather, the Carter Center bases its assessment on a) Kenya’s international obligations and b) Kenya’s constitutional and legal framework.” He added that “free and fair” is no longer the “language of choice in international public law”.

Peter Visnovitz, EU election observation mission spokesperson, agreed: “The ‘free and fair’ phrase fell out of use because defining an election as ‘free and fair’ is very black and white—it requires a yes or no answer. Whereas, in fact, electoral processes are complex and it is very difficult to come up with a concept of ‘fair’ that would please everyone.”

Ilona Tip, operations director at EISA’s South African office in Johannesburg, explained that phrases like “transparent and credible” or “the expression of the will of voters” are now preferred.

But, in addition to being diplomatic, how independent are these observer missions? Of the international groups, the Carter Center is the most autonomous, according to Mr Flottman. “They will not always say what the [US] State Department wants to hear,” Mr Flottman said, adding “they have a record of independence.” The Carter Center had 14 long-term and 38 short-term observers in Kenya and visited 265 of the 33,400 polling stations.

The EU and the Commonwealth missions are also known for their independence and diplomacy, but others—particularly groups representing intergovernmental bodies—are less critical and independent, according to Mr Flottman. The AU mission had 69 observers and visited 400 polling stations throughout the country. The IGAD/ EAC/COMESA coalition deployed 55 observers to this year’s election.

Kenya is a member of the AU, IGAD, the EAC and COMESA, and they share geopolitical interests. Mr Flottman emphasised that observer missions representing the regional groupings are unlikely “to challenge any position of government”. For instance, the IGAD coalition mission declared the party nominations stage a success, Mr Flottman said. “They said the primaries were good. This is a nonsense statement. No one said that, come on.”

“Observer missions from the AU, SADC [Southern African Development Community], EAC, ECOWAS [Economic Community Of West African States]…because they are intergovernmental bodies, there is the ‘you rub my back, I’ll rub yours’ approach to certifying elections,” EISA’s Mr Owuor said, supporting Mr Flottman’s view. “In other words they were not very critical in an effort not to offend the current government.”

As well as monitoring elections by direct observation, some observer groups also verify results independently through parallel voter tabulation (PVT), an election observation method where ballots are counted independently of the electoral commission at a representative random sample of polling stations. In Kenya, ELOG was the only group that used this system to authenticate the election results autonomously.

ELOG found that the IEBC’s official results were “consistent with ELOG’s PVT projections” and that the group was confident that the election day process was “generally credible”. After the election, the losing presidential candidate Raila Odinga challenged the election results. The Supreme Court upheld Uhuru Kenyatta’s win on March 30th and cited ELOG’s independent voting results in its decision, ELOG’s Mr Kinyua said.

Local and international election observer missions are vital to African elections—domestic groups for their long-term and ongoing role, and international groups for bringing international experience and insight. These election observation groups highlight shortcomings but also give elections credibility. One day, they might call all African elections credible and transparent—or even free and fair.

In 2006, after 32 years of kleptocratic rule by Mobutu Sese Seko and years of civil war which left several million dead, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held its first multiparty elections in nearly 40 years. The UN rallied huge amounts of funding and organisational support. The elections were considered a success.

Five years later in 2011, the DRC again held presidential and parliamentary elections. This time, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and allegations of fraud marred the elections. Why the difference? Financing, organisational support and advice from the international community had dropped sharply.

The mood in the DRC before and after the 2006 polls was one of triumph. The elections were a culmination of years of hard work.

The various parties had taken the first step towards the 2006 election in December 2002, when they signed the peace accords to end the war which had started in 1998. A three-year transition period followed. During this second step, the transition government elaborated the institutional and governance architecture for the future.

Neither of these two periods was easy. Warring parties were at odds and frontlines remained in place throughout the peace talks. Even after the ink on the agreement had dried, rebel factions cited security concerns; months went by before they agreed to travel to Kinshasa, and then only with large military contingents in tow.

A difficult period of building consensus around new institutions followed. Agreement had to be reached on the architecture for the country’s first multiparty election and the provincial assemblies. A new constitution would pave the way for increased decentralisation. There were countless delays and endless spats between the many players in the transition government. What was to be a two-year transition turned into three.

The international community’s massive support and funding as well as strong deterrents against overturning the transition process are responsible for the successful process that culminated in the 2006 presidential and legislative elections. One of the UN’s largest and most expensive peacekeeping missions, better known by its French acronym MONUC (now MONUSCO), played a key role by providing an ongoing stabilising presence.

In addition, numerous envoys as well as the International Committee to Support the Transition (CIAT), a body composed of the ambassadors of 12 countries, helped and advised the transition government. All worked tirelessly to keep the different factions in line and the process on track.

Money also helped. The UN and the EU, in particular, financed the elections, which ultimately cost over $500m. Equally important, MONUC gave huge support to the National Electoral Commission (CEI), which was responsible for the bulk of the electoral operations, from procurement to logistics to monitoring.

The international community would have condemned Congolese parties that acted as spoilers or derailed the transition and election process, while the Congolese electorate would have shown their displeasure with such behaviour at the polls. This acted as a disincentive for any parties to disrupt the process.

The electorate expressed intense confidence in the electoral process mostly because outsiders were managing the process. Many registered to vote and they turned out in large numbers on election day. For a brief moment, the Congolese seemed to trust their political system, to feel that their vote really counted. Joseph Kabila won the 2006 presidential elections following a second-round run-off with his main rival, Jean-Pierre Bemba.

Unfortunately, the elections held in the DRC in late 2011 presented a very different picture, playing out like many other post-conflict polls. The main difference between these and the earlier elections was the level of support—financial, material, organisational and advisory—from the international community. This time around, the Congolese government was responsible for organising everything from voter registration to the polls themselves.

Long before the elections took place, developments in the political environment did not bode well for their transparency. First the national assembly, dominated by Mr Kabila’s party, voted to scrap a second round run-off if no candidate won an absolute majority in the first round, a move widely interpreted as facilitating Mr Kabila’s victory against a divided opposition. Then Mr Kabila appointed a close associate, Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, to head the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), thereby depriving the body of independence and credibility.

This had a negative effect on relations with the international community, said Denis Kadima, the head of the Electoral Institute for Sustainability in Africa (EISA), in an interview with Africa in Fact. Though it remained an adviser to the electoral process, the financial and other support it provided was only a fraction of that given in 2006.

“The first time around, the country had not had elections in 40 years, they were very much listening [to the international community],” he said. “Then came the next election—you can look at how the next commission was put in place, and who was chosen to head that commission. Relations between that commission and the UN were terribly tense. There was no engagement, it was like ‘we know it all.’”

A severe decline in international assistance to the electoral process can also lead to a drop in standards and transparency. In the DRC in 2011, international funders donated about $167m, according to the Carter Center, a US-based human rights group, while the total cost of the 2011 elections, according to Congolese scholar Mvemba Dizolele, came close to $900m. In some cases, Mr Kadima said, the international community may be willing to continue to provide some support. The new government, however, may want it to be less involved than the first election.

“By the second election, times have changed…But the reality is that the winner will try to entrench their power…That is why second elections tend to fail, the quality is always poorer because first of all that first electoral commission is transitional, all the knowledge they have accumulated in the course of that transition, it’s gone, because there is a new commission to mark the end of the transition…Government also wants to assert itself: ‘I have been elected, you can’t come and tell me what to do, the people gave me the mandate,’” Mr Kadima explained.

High levels of cooperation during the transition period are exceptional while the international community’s mandate in second elections is usually much more limited, he added. “International organisations understand that it is difficult to sustain the same level of professionalism and efficiency from the transitional election to the post-transition election,” Mr Kadima said.

“People would be willing to go in to help, but the framework, the mandate, the involvement, the roles are different. They [the international community] have their hands tied…There should be some mechanism to ensure that the winner does not take away all the positive things that were established during the transition. How do you do that when you don’t have that mandate?”

Serious irregularities such as intimidation of voters and election monitors, and opaque counting procedures, tarnished the DRC‘s second election. Local and international election observers called the process flawed, but stopped short of declaring the results illegitimate. The domestic opposition rejected the results. Some parties chose to boycott the national assembly, including the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, the country’s main opposition party, which won more seats than any other opposition party.

“The element of leadership is key…Whoever is elected, if they don’t take responsibility for the future of their country…if they don’t show leadership, if they are short-sighted, want to see things for their own benefit and for those around them, it will be a vicious circle,” Mr Kadima said.

Meanwhile, the schedule for provincial elections—which were due to be held in 2012, and local elections, which have never been held and are now effectively nine years behind schedule—has been suspended. The government says that it does not have the money to fund them, while donors have made international funds contingent upon a wholesale reform of the electoral commission.

Although parliament voted last year to restructure the CENI, and a law to this effect was passed in May 2013, the reform has been controversial. The ruling party will continue to have the greatest number of representatives on the CENI and there is concern that it will try and maintain control of the institution.

The mood now contrasts starkly with the one of triumph after the 2006 polls. Most Congolese are disillusioned with the political system, while the Kabila government has been significantly weakened by the controversy around the election.

It has been a bumpy transition, as Tunisia and its neighbours have shown. After secular-minded Mr Ben Ali fled into exile on January 14th 2011, a special commission tasked with producing electoral law and organising elections was set up. Comprised of 155 legal experts, representatives of political parties and civil society, it worked with the transitional government. Nine months later, their efforts gave birth to Tunisia’s firstever democratic elections, held on October 23rd 2011.

The country’s newly-engaged citizens voted in a temporary National Constituent Assembly made up mostly of political neophytes without any experience in government or law. A ruling coalition composed of the Islamist party Nahda and two secular parties dominates this 217-seat temporary parliament. This is where Tunisia’s latest troubles began.

The assembly’s main task is to draw up a new constitution that will eventually lead to elections for permanent offices. So far, members have written three drafts, the latest of which should be endorsed by a two-thirds majority vote, or via a referendum (if the assembly is unable to reach the two-thirds majority). Though Nahda, the dominant party in the ruling coalition, has promised to keep sharia law out of the constitution, secularists fear that if the party wins by a larger margin in the next elections, Islamic law could creep in.

This is where Tunisian politics become even trickier to understand. While the assembly is fighting over the constitution, it is also wrangling over two other items: a new law that establishes a new electoral commission and draft legislation that will determine how the full-term president and parliament will be elected. The main question on everyone’s lips: will Tunisia’s next elections be free and fair? At this pace, no one can safely predict when they will take place, let alone whether they will be democratic.

In December 2012 the assembly passed a law creating the new electoral commission, called the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE). (A temporary body with the same name had organised the October 2011 elections.) The assembly passed the law easily because the main opposition coalition boycotted the vote, and preferred to protest against the Revolution Protection League (LPR) for allegedly attacking the headquarters of Tunisia’s main labour union. The LPR is widely regarded as Nahda’s militia.

Monia Abed, former head of the first ISIE’s legal department, is very critical of the law that created the new electoral commission because it gives the executive branch undue political influence, compromising the commission’s independence.

The administration—including the interior and other ministries, the police, the army and regional governors appointed by the ruling party coalition—can refuse cooperation with the electoral body. For instance, the interior ministry could refuse to open identity registers to remove dead citizens from the voter registration lists. Or the police could refuse to protect the polling stations, usually located in schools.

The new law allows the ISIE to turn to the administrative court for redress if the executive blocks the election in any way, but this is an unwieldy process that can take several weeks.

“This is a blatant power grab by Nahda,” says Ghazi Ghraïri, secretary-general of the International Academy of Constitutional Law, an NGO based in Tunisia. “The ruling party is running scared that they will be voted out in the next election and are thus not willing to ensure free and fair elections.”

People are disappointed with Nahda’s management of the country. Critics accuse the party of giving more than 1,500 jobs to its cronies and other loyal supporters. Although it is still Tunisia’s most popular party, its rating dropped from 25% in May 2012 to 19.5% in January 2013, according to an opinion poll conducted by Tunis-based Emrhod Consulting, a market and social research firm.

Economic indicators have worsened: unemployment has climbed from 13% in 2010 to 17% in 2012, the latest figures available from the National Institute of Statistics (NIS). Inflation is at nearly 6% and the central bank’s hard currency reserves cover only three months of imports. Across the country, standards of living are dire, with 2.5m out
of a population of 10.5m living below a poverty line of $2 a day, according to the NIS.

In addition to undue executive branch influence, the law has reduced the number of regional ISIE offices to four. In comparison, the first ISIE had offices in all of Tunisia’s 24 regions during the 2011 election. This compromises the monitoring of elections and increases the possibility of tampering.

“Will Nahda have the means, maturity and openness to allow the required
neutrality for free and fair elections?” Mr Ghraïri asks.

The new electoral commission’s two-headed structure is also undermining its independence. The first line of command is a nine-member council. Each member must win a two-thirds vote in the Nahda-dominated assembly. Since March the assembly’s selection committee has been sifting through the 1,000 people who have applied for the six-year posting on the electoral commission. The prime minister, also a Nahda
member, will nominate one of the council’s members as the electoral commission’s
president. This candidate will need to be approved by the constituent assembly.

The second head of the new ISIE is the executive director, appointed by the nine-member council, who will be the head of the commission’s secretariat and in charge of administration, finance and technical issues. The relationship between the council and the secretariat is not defined clearly.

While the assembly is wrangling over the electoral commission’s appointments and structure, the assembly’s committee charged with writing a new constitution presented its third draft on April 22nd. Observers are predicting that the assembly will adopt the new rulebook in July or August.

But strangely enough, the constitution will not define an electoral system. A draft electoral law, also the subject of much heated debate, will outline the election structures to pick a new full-term president and parliament. So far, Nahda and the opposition, a motley collection of anti-fundamentalists, have agreed to compromise on a hybrid system. A general election will be held to elect the president and parliament. The majority party in parliament will then choose the prime minister.

But the general elections for president and parliament will use different systems. The draft legislation may include a provision calling for a two-round presidential election if none of the candidates can win an absolute majority outright, according to Mr Ghraïri and other observers.

Once this has been agreed to, the next task of the constituent assembly will be to agree on the parliamentary elections. For parliament, Nahda was initially lobbying for a simple majority vote in which the victor is the candidate who wins the most votes even if it is not an absolute majority. Under this system, also known as first past the post, Nahda could win the majority of constituencies, even if only by a small margin. Jawhar Ben Mbarek, a constitutional law and elections expert, said this system would return the ruling party to power with about 62% of the vote.

After long and harsh negotiations between the main political forces of the country, the ruling party agreed on April 25th that the draft electoral law will stipulate a system of proportional representation for the parliamentary elections. If Nahda does not change tack, the constituent assembly will incorporate this provision into the electoral law.

Proportional representation was used to allocate the seats for the constituent assembly after Tunisia’s October 2011 elections. Many African countries, including South Africa, use proportional representation to minimise dominance by larger parties and to ensure that small parties can gain access to the legislature.

Tunisia, like other emerging democracies, is discovering the difficulty of writing a new rulebook and establishing a new system of government. Wrangling over the constitution and the electoral law will continue for many more months, as will the process of choosing members for the new electoral commission.

Once the electoral law and constitution are adopted, the next hurdle will be registering Tunisia’s voters. Up to half of Tunisia’s eligible voters are not registered, said the first ISIE in its final report published in February 2012. With a voter turnout of roughly 50% in the 2011 election, only one quarter of eligible Tunisians cast their ballots.

All this leads observers to remain sceptical that elections will take place in the last quarter of 2013, as the government and the assembly’s president suggested recently. At the earliest, the next elections are more likely to take place in 2014.

On the road to the latest face-off, Mr Mugabe has been careful not to openly provoke a climate of fear and intimidation, a stance that has surprised the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Instead, Mr Mugabe has persistently called for peace and tolerance ahead of the elections.

He used the celebrations of the country’s 33rd Independence Day, held on April 18th, to reiterate his stance. “The country is now due to hold harmonised elections, and I wish to urge the nation to uphold and promote peace, you are all Zimbabweans,” Mr Mugabe said. “Go and vote your own way, no one should force you to vote for me. I urge all our people to replicate the peaceful and tranquil environment which characterised the referendum held in March.”

Military personnel and Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF supporters killed nearly 300 MDC supporters during the June 2008 election, according to Human Rights Watch, an NGO. A repeat of violence on this scale in the upcoming elections would rob Mr Mugabe of much-needed legitimacy among his regional peers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Political observers say SADC member states have hardened their stance against Mr Mugabe since the last election. They hope pre-emptive action will forestall another flood of Zimbabweans into their territories.

“South Africa has borne the brunt of Zimbabwe’s political instability, and the hardline stance by President Jacob Zuma is informed by that position,” said Trevor Maisiri, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “In the SADC region, Mugabe is still widely regarded as an elderly statesman and has allies in Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania.”

Mr Mugabe, keen to recast himself as a reformer, has been at pains to please all sides within SADC as the new election looms. His political behaviour has strayed from his usual stubbornness: in March, he accepted the results of the referendum for a new constitution; his Zanu-PF party continues to engage at a cosmetic level with the MDC in implementing the SADC election roadmap; and he has given free rein to Mr Zuma’s facilitators to hold meetings and resolve differences between the two parties.

The successful adoption of the constitution has catalysed Zanu-PF’s pre-election maneuvers. The party has pressed for elections to be held at the nearest possible juncture, no later than June 29th 2013. This position has alarmed the MDC.

Crucial political reforms to ensure free and fair elections are not yet in place. The SADC-supervised Global Political Agreement (GPA), designed to alleviate political tensions and signed by Zimbabwe’s major political parties after the 2008 elections, insisted on a number of political improvements before the next elections. While voters approved the GPA’s major item, a new constitution, the unity government has failed to reform the police, intelligence services and armed forces, as called for by the roadmap, while broadcast media still display an open bias towards Zanu-PF.

A recent police crackdown has resulted in raids on the offices of many civil society organisations, the banning of shortwave radios and a spike in arbitrary arrests. The police recently arrested a prominent human rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association director, Okay Machisa, for hampering efforts to create a peaceful run-up to the election.

“My arrest exposed the lie that change has taken place in Zimbabwe,” Ms Mtetwa said. “The more things change, the more things just remain the same. We might have had a government of national unity and adopted a new constitution, but nothing has really changed up to now.”

Despite the police crackdowns, Mr Mugabe is determined to hold elections within the next three months. He argues that elections cannot be held after June 29th, as the parliament’s term will have expired. An April 2013 High Court ruling by Judge President George Chiweshe, a known ally of Mr Mugabe and chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) during the disputed 2008 election, has further strengthened Mr Mugabe’s push for early elections.

In his High Court ruling, Mr Chiweshe said “no prevailing circumstances such as war or a state of emergency existed to warrant an extension of parliament and result in the delay,” dismissing a constitutional provision that would allow a threemonth deferral of elections until September 2013. Polls suggest that if elections were to take place in
June, Zanu-PF would win.

Fears abound that a delay in the elections would weaken the ruling party’s dominant position. As a result, Zanu-PF hardliners have latched on to the High Court ruling. They have denounced the four-year-old unity government and dropped any pretence about committing to the SADC elections roadmap.

The MDC is sounding the alarm bells, worried that the next election is unlikely to be free and fair. “Zanu-PF is preparing to win by hook and crook, the voter roll is yet to be cleaned up and reforms are yet to be implemented. We need the SADC, African Union, United Nations and other international observers to come and ensure a smooth transfer of power,” said Tapiwa Mashakada, the MDC’s deputy secretary-general.

In retaliation against the sanctions imposed in 2003 by the United States, Australia and the European Union on Mr Mugabe and members of Zanu-PF’s top brass, Zimbabwe has barred international observers from monitoring the upcoming elections, according to Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, minister of foreign affairs (also on the US list of sanctioned Zimbabweans). Zanu-PF has expressed its faith in the ZEC’s organisational skills and in SADC observers to satisfactorily monitor the election.

Rita Makarau, the chairwoman of the newly re-constituted election commission, says that the election supervisor is prepared to run an election any time. The ZEC’s impartiality, however, is disputed: the president unilaterally appoints the ZEC head and commissioners.

Under law, the ZEC is now compelled to release election results within five days of voting. The electoral commission’s smooth running of the March 16th referendum and its release two days later of its results, has emboldened Ms Makarau.

She has denied media reports that the voters’ roll—controlled by registrargeneral Tobaiwa Mudede, an ally of Mr Mugabe—is in shambles. Ms Makarau claims that “345,400 dead persons have been removed from the voters’ roll in the last five months, while 60,000 voters had registered as first time voters. We are noticing a growing interest to register as voters. Currently, there are 5.6m voters registered on
the national roll.”

Zimbabwe’s diaspora, however, is not on the electoral register because they are barred from voting. About 4m Zimbabweans are emigrants, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Political observers say Zanu-PF has political reasons for blocking a diaspora vote: most Zimbabwean nationals left after the Zanu-PF-led farm invasions in 2000 and the resulting economic and political instability; they would probably vote against the ruling party.

In its defence, the unity government says it does not have the funds to bankroll a diaspora ballot, let alone the upcoming general election. Tendai Biti, the finance minister, has slashed an initial election budget of $250m to $132m and has indicated it could be reduced to $100m.

Unable to tax the Zanu-PF-controlled diamond mines, he is now pressing telecommunications companies Econet Wireless Zimbabwe and Telecel Zimbabwe to foot the elections bill. After appealing to the UN for money, Zanu-PF officials refused a UN request to meet civic society groups, a move which cost them the financial support they had been seeking. A touted $100m loan from South Africa is likely to be channelled to fund the election, although Mr Biti insists that it will be used to “meet budgetary shortfalls”.

The day before, not far from this field, a mob attacked campaign workers putting up pro-constitution posters. A BBC reporter got caught in the mêlée, too. Today the foreign correspondents are back, anticipating a repeat of yesterday’s assault or the violence that racked the 2008 elections.

But the voters barely notice the clusters of international TV crews, preferring instead sombre inspection of the ground, or fits of conversation with their neighbours. In this blue-collar neighbourhood of Zimbabwe’s capital city, people wait to place a cross in a box on a little piece of paper.

This poll, held on March 16th, was doomed to dullness. There was nothing to fight against, this time. The major parties, President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and both factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), actively supported the new constitution. This was unsurprising given that they were its primary authors. No violence of any significance had been reported. This shed an ironic light on the arrests of a few NGO workers caught distributing “illegal” radios intended to allow listeners to hear news besides the one-sided reports from the state broadcaster.

As expected, the voters gave the new constitution a landslide “yes”. The “vote no” advocates were marginal. Of the 3.3m Zimbabweans that participated, 93% voted in favour, 5% against and 2% spoilt their ballots. With little fanfare, Zimbabweans established a new foundation for the laws of their land.

International and local journalists and political analysts had come to observe the referendum and see what it might portend for the upcoming presidential elections. After the blood, fury and chaos of the 2008 presidential elections, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) brokered a compromise that resulted in Zanu-PF sharing power with the MDC.

This compact mapped out specific reforms, including a new constitution, that needed to be adopted before the next elections could be held. The last constitution dated back to the 1979 Lancaster House agreement that established the independent state of Zimbabwe. Since that time, the constitution had been amended 19 times.

Most of the people in Harare and Mbare’s voting queues were reluctant to discuss the constitution. Some had not read or seen this 172-page document; some had read only parts or summaries of it; others had been briefed at community meetings.

Many voters said they preferred the new constitution because of its civil rights and empowerment sections. The constitution gives young people under the age of 35 an ambiguous right to education and economic empowerment. Women are guaranteed 60 out of the 210 seats in the National Assembly.

Colin Mtizwa, a driver, had not seen a copy of the constitution. The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) had only printed 90,000 copies for a population of over 12m. After receiving a copy, Mr Mtizwa thought it over for a few days before eventually deciding that the constitution, for the most part, was worth endorsing.

Political pundits expressed similar views. Cousin Zilala, country director of Amnesty International, described the constitution as a step in the right direction. He did not agree with the continued existence of the death penalty, even if its application was much more limited than before. Women can no longer be sentenced to death, nor the elderly, nor mutineers or traitors. Now, only men aged between 21 and 70 who are convicted of aggravated murder face the death penalty.

Okay Machisa, national director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights), was another proponent of the new constitution. He praised its bill of rights guaranteeing freedom of expression and other rights for detainees, including outlawing torture. This new constitution was a chance to restore hope to an embattled country, Mr Machisa said.

Like many others, he admitted that it was far from perfect, but it provided enough flexibility for future changes. In particular, Mr Machisa was unhappy with the new constitution’s limits on presidential terms and powers. ZimRights was already planning to prepare an amendment to further limit executive powers, he said.

Although the new document reduces presidential tenure to two terms of five years each, it does not apply retrospectively, permitting Mr Mugabe to remain in power for another decade.Though the executive has lost veto powers over legislation, it still holds an inordinate amount of clout.

The president now needs a two-thirds majority to declare a state of emergency or dissolve parliament, something that he could do unilaterally before. The president can unilaterally appoint cabinet ministers and attorneys-general. He can deploy the military without parliament’s approval. Mr Tsvangirai is reportedly happy with the constitution’s strong executive powers, which he said he would use to enact wide-ranging reforms if elected in the upcoming presidential polls.

The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a civil society organisation that shares its roots with the MDC, was the major driver of the “no” campaign. It also condemned the executive branch’s strong powers. Its main objection, however, was that the three major political parties had written the constitution without consulting civil society groups, said Blessing Vava, the NCA’s spokesman. In addition, Zimbabweans had been given only three weeks to inspect the document, he complained. Due to the constitution’s inadequate distribution, most Zimbabweans would be going to the polls without fully understanding it.

Senator Sekai Holland, co-minister of state for national healing, reconciliation and integration, flew in from New York in time for the referendum. She is a matriarchal figure in Zimbabwean politics, acting as a bridge between Zanu-PF and the MDC. Her ministerial portfolio is oriented to minimise political violence and she said she was proud that it had not marred the referendum. By the time she arrived at her constituency in Tafara-Mabvuku, 17km east of Harare, it was late afternoon; the polling stations were nearly empty.

Many in her constituency were ineligible to vote. In Zimbabwe, 1.5m people are excluded from the voting registers because their father was not born in Zimbabwe. This is common in a region with high levels of migrant labour. From the 1980s, many pieces of legislation had reduced the pool of eligible voters, but the Citizenship Act of 2000 was the most stringent. Intended to disenfranchise white Zimbabweans who held British and Zimbabwean passports, it excluded mostly the Zimbabwean-born children of Zambian, Mozambican and Malawian nationals. The new constitution fixes this anomaly, giving citizenship to all Zimbabwean-born people, including those with only one Zimbabwean-born parent.

The implications for future elections are significant. Ms Holland said that her first course of action after the referendum would be to start a voter registration drive targeting the new citizens, who are expected to bolster the ranks of opposition parties. Still, Zimbabwe’s 4m strong diaspora remain without voting rights. The group has long demanded the franchise and as long as their remittance payments continue to be a cornerstone of the economy, they will be insistent that they should have a say in Zimbabwe’s future.

In September 2012 Mr Rajoelina and the opposition parties signed an elections roadmap agreement after three years of protracted negotiations led by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). After overcoming much mistrust and disbelief from observers and voters alike, the country is now gearing up for the presidential poll set for July 24th.

Justine Sija, a seafood vendor from the south-western fishing village of St Augustin, is one of millions looking forward to the event. She has voted in all eight of Madagascar’s presidential elections held since 1965. “In the beginning we voted for President Tsiranana because we had to, but he was the best president in any case. In his time, things were cheap. Since then, presidents have changed, but prices just keep going up. I would like a president who could solve this problem and who will give us aid. But I’m not sure how reliable the tally is, as I know that even here in the village officials used to steal votes.”

Election troubles have plagued this Indian Ocean nation ever since its independence from France in 1960. Philibert Tsiranana, who became Madagascar’s first president in 1959, was the only candidate in the island nation’s first two elections, in 1965 and 1972. Though he won 99.7% of the vote in 1972, a popular uprising forced him out of office later that year and he handed over power to an army chief. Didier Ratsiraka took power in a 1975 military reshuffle and then won re-election in 1982, 1989 and 1996. More candidates ran in these elections. Like Ms Sija, few citizens trusted the results because the interior ministry ran the polls.

When Mr Ravalomanana first ran for the presidency in 2002, the yoghurt tycoon dispatched his own helicopters to the polling stations to conduct his own tally. When his results differed from those of the ministry, a six-month-long political crisis broke out, ending only after Mr Ratsiraka, the incumbent president, sought exile in France. This ended his reign, which had lasted on and off for nearly 30 years.

The Independent National Electoral Commission of the Transition (CENIT), an independent election body helped by UN funds and advice, is in charge of the polls now. Its president, Beatrice Atallah, has served on earlier electoral commissions and she is currently a judge at the Appellate Court in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital. It is time citizens and not judges elect a president, which has been the practice after many previous disputed elections, she says.

Managing elections in Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island with a coastline of 4,827km, is a staggering challenge. CENIT is equipping, manning and protecting 20,000 polling stations, up from 17,000 in past elections. The international community has donated $25m to the $60m electoral budget.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has stepped in to help manage the funds and to advise CENIT. “Some places are so remote, you can only reach them by motorbike,” says Fatma Samoura, the UNDP’s resident representative in Madagascar. “We’ve asked South Africa to give us some helicopters for this. We know how to do this according to international norms and standards, from printing the
ballots to deciding whose name appears first on the ballot. If they want the seal of the international community, they need to get it right.”

Voter registration is turning into the commission’s largest organisational headache. CENIT estimates that there are 10.2m Malagasy over the age of 18 who are eligible to vote out of a population of 21m. This is a rough estimate, however, as nearly 1m Malagasy, mostly women in remote areas, do not have birth certificates, another rough estimate.

Birth certificates are needed to obtain a national identity card, which is needed to register to vote. Polety, 20, from Namakia, a small village in southern Madagascar, recently received her national identity card. Like many rural Malagasy, she does not have a family name. “The fokotany (neighbourhood council) chief comes once a year to register people in the village, but for some reason he never found me,” she says. Polety
has now applied for a voter’s ID. “I want to be in this group of people who can vote.
I will look closely at the face of the candidates, see what they’re like and listen on the
radio to what they’re planning to do for us.”

Benjamin Ramaharosoa is president of the Soavimasoandro neighbourhood council in downtown Antananarivo. He works in a tiny office, two dark rooms with a few bare desks. Boxes filled with CENIT voter registration materials are stacked near the walls.

“During the elections in 2002, things weren’t done properly,” he says. “If you had a residency registration card from the fokotany they would let you vote.” But if you did not have a card or did not live in the neighbourhood, you could still vote: “The chief just needed to know who you were,” he adds. “Now we have proper preparations.”

So far, he has registered 11,200 people, but knows there are 700 who have not signed up. “We sent agents through the neighbourhood to talk to everybody. Some people still refuse to register. Sometimes they are convinced this election is organised by the HAT [the acronym for Mr Rajoelina’s transitional government]. Others are illiterate and too scared to enter an office or even to hold a pen.”

A major feature of this election is a paper ballot, the first in Madagascar’s electoral history. Before, voters would enter a polling station, pick up a series of small photographs, place the picture of their preferred candidate in an envelope and drop it in the ballot box.

This system encouraged fraud because interior ministry election officials could hide the photographs of opposition candidates. Sometimes, the smaller parties did not have the financial means to print photographs and place them in rural polling stations. This year, all candidates will be on the same ballot, which features a picture of every candidate, with his or her name and political party written underneath next to a box to be marked by the voter. For the first time, CENIT will print and distribute the ballots.

Ms Samoura is encouraging political parties to monitor the election. “The politicians can send their people to the polling stations. Instead of complaining afterwards, they have the chance to make sure elections are fair from the beginning.

A politician can deploy 40,000 supporters, put two in every station, and these people can complain as soon as the office closes,” she says. Party representatives can also fill out a written complaint during the voting process, which will be attached to the official voting operation log.

“We don’t have enough international observers to go everywhere and often you find problems in the small villages, where nobody wants to go,” Ms Samoura added. “Instead of handing out T-shirts, politicians better make sure their people are there.”

These elections should be the cornerstone for establishing a stable democratic
government, Ms Samoura adds. “The real problem here is the mistrust between the civil society and its rulers,” she says. “People need to know that if they commit crimes, they will go to jail. Once there are solid institutions—a democratically-elected parliament, an independent judiciary and journalists who write articles based on facts everybody involved in illegal trafficking, and they know who they are, will be judged. Their hour will come soon. But right now, the ball is in the court of the Malagasy. If they want democracy, they will have to go out and cast their votes. We can support them, but the rest is up to them.”

While the electoral commission has concentrated on the technical and operational aspects of the process, SADC has slogged through a list of political hurdles. First, the two rivals, Messrs Rajoelina and Ravalomanana, had to be persuaded not to run. Mr Rajoelina finally agreed in January 2013, a move that has divided his Young Determined Malagasy (TGV) party. Four of his former allies are now running for president, opposing Antananarivo’s mayor, Edgard Razafindravahy, the official TGV candidate.

In a surprise move, however, Mr Rajoelina changed his mind in early May and managed to get his candidacy approved. But he must step down 60 days before the elections and he must run as an independent as the TGV already has a candidate.

Mr Rajoelina explained that he made his turnaround after Mr Ravalomanana managed to circumvent his promise not to run by naming his wife, Lalao, as the candidate for his I love Madagascar (TIM) party. The electoral commission approved her candidacy and polls show that she may win.

The electoral commission approved a record-breaking 41 candidates for a place on the ballot, including Mr Ratsiraka, the former president, now 76 and back from exile.

The elections roadmap also promises amnesty for all former political leaders. Many fell out of political favour and were later convicted for committing economic crimes. “We have two more months for the courts to grant amnesties for all kinds of politicians, from presidential candidates to delegates,” Ms Atallah says. “I understand how hard this is for the involved judges. These are people who were condemned. Now the judges have to undo those verdicts. It’s very hard on them.”

Ms Atallah has already displayed her independence and determination to make the elections fair. In January Mr Rajoelina tried to change the election schedule, asking for parliamentary elections to take place before the presidential elections, which he hoped would strengthen his political chances if his party won a majority in the legislature.

CENIT did not budge and the elections will go ahead as planned. Parliamentary elections will be held on September 25th after the July presidential poll and will be followed by local elections on October 23rd.

Even if the elections are not perfect, they will be important for Madagascar, Ms Atallah says. “If we can limit the problems and have elections that are as democratic as possible, we will at least be able to come out of this crisis.”

The ubiquitous mobile telephone makes this all possible. According to a multicountry 2012 Gallup survey, half of all Africans surveyed living on less than $1 a day had access to a mobile phone, that is they either owned one or were able to borrow one from a relative, friend or neighbour.

Absolute majorities of Africans living on less than $1 a day owned their own cellphones in countries including Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. Together with those who reported they had access to a relative’s or friend’s mobile, cellphone penetration exceeded 80% of poor Africans in countries including Botswana, Kenya and Zambia. There was only one country—Mali—where a majority of those living on less than $1 a day did not have access to a portable handset.

More and more Africans are expected to use mobile phones. Alcatel Lucent is projecting a 60% increase in the number of mobiles on the continent, from 500m in 2012 to 800m in 2015, according to an Inter Press Service report. Of these, 80% will be internet-enabled. By comparison, just 12 years ago, there were only 5m mobile telephones in all of Africa. This means activists and citizen journalists can distribute reports without the need for radio, newspapers or television.

Meanwhile, the power of inexpensive, low-end cellphones has increased, making possible access to tools that only a decade or two ago would have been considered science fiction.

Consider e-mail: now anyone with a mobile has access to e-mail messaging even if their telephones do not have internet access. For example, Gmail SMS from Google is a free e-mail service that runs on “dumb” mobile phones with no internet access. Users can send and receive e-mail in the form of SMS messages on low-end phones that are not equipped with Wi-Fi or third-generation (3G) internet capability.

SMS is another powerful technology. In Kenya, anyone with a cellphone can use Hatari, a tool that lets members of the public report bribes and corruption by e-mail, text or tweet. Another is M-Maji, which provides real-time information about clean water—prices, suppliers and availability—to urban slum dwellers on cellphones.

Mimiboard, a virtual noticeboard, is another rapidly spreading innovation. It won the most votes at last year’s Open Innovation Africa Summit. Using the web or SMS, users can post events and information about social and political issues, sports and entertainment in their communities.

Mimiboards have already attracted citizen journalists and activists who may not be able to operate openly. For example, The Zimbabwean, a digital news provider published by dissidents in exile, has already launched Mimiboards for several local regions, according to its website.

Freedom Fone, another platform created in Zimbabwe, allows citizen reporters to use phones to file audio reports on events as they happen. During a breaking news story such as an election, or a crisis such as a flood, anyone can dial a number, follow voice menu prompts and provide updates, leave voice messages to receive field reports or use polls for focused feedback.

Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are already using these tools. “We use mobiles for new media campaigns for public awareness,” Sam du Pont, former programme officer for internet freedom at Freedom House, a US NGO with regional offices in Africa, told me in an interview. “The tools we use are predominantly mobile-based. The groups we work with use the web, e-mail, social media to certain degrees. But for any communication for mass scale, we use SMS.”

NGOs and international media organisations also provide training to citizen journalists in the use of these tech tools. Voice of America (VOA) has trained about 100 correspondents in the Democratic Republic of Congo to use low-end inexpensive mobile phones to send stories, photos and even videos directly to Facebook and Twitter.

The head of the network’s French to Africa Service said the contributions of the citizen reporters supplement the work of professional broadcasters. 

For the more ambitious (and technically-skilled) citizen journalist who has a higher-end smartphone, there is the personal radio station, which can now be started for little or no money. Journalism.co.uk, an online publishing company, recently posted a guide that explains how to create a radio station using Airtime, a free or paid-for radio management application. The radio station runs from a web browser and includes the option of streaming live reports from a smartphone.

An ambitious citizen journalist can combine these tech tools with SMS and audio to create news stories aimed at anyone with a cellphone. Unlike most of the world that is accustomed to the 15-second sound bite, Africans have embraced mobiledelivered audio in ways that are quite different from the rest of the world.

“Africans are listening to their phones for 20-minute programmes,” Steven Ferri, VOA’s Africa web managing editor, told me in an interview. “No one in America would do this.”

That is the good news. The bad news is that autocratic governments have learned how to use new technologies to locate citizen journalists and subject them to harassment and worse.

“Mobile is a scary platform,” Freedom House’s Mr du Pont said. Cellphones “are one of the least secure technologies we have for secure communications. Any SMS that bounces off the [cellphone] tower can be read by the mobile operator—but also by anybody sitting beneath the tower with a thousand-dollar piece of equipment.”

The broader danger was described concisely in the 2011 annual report of Amnesty International: “Technology will serve the purposes of those who control it— whether their goal is the promotion of rights or the undermining of rights. We must be mindful that in a world of asymmetric power, the ability of governments and other institutional actors to abuse and exploit technology will always be superior to the grassroots activists, the beleaguered human rights advocate, the intrepid whistle-blower and the individual whose sense of justice demands that they be able to seek information or describe and document an injustice through these technologies.”

State control of the media is not the only hurdle preventing parties from getting their message to the electorate. Many face the invidious choice of either giving journalists “petrol money” or having their press conference ignored. “It’s a pity that, as the party advocating for a corruption-free society, we find ourselves embroiled in this vice,” says Kasekende Bashir of the Liberal Democratic Transparency (LDT) party in Uganda.

Social media have the power to change all this by permitting parties to bypass the gatekeepers—reporters, editors and government officials—who shape or control the press agenda. The Arab spring in 2010–11 revealed how social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube revolutionised political communication in North Africa.

In Africa only about 16% of the population have internet access—less than half of the world average of 34%, according to Internet World Stats, an online demography site. A shortage of electricity and broadband infrastructure, coupled with the high cost of hardware to access the internet, mean that most African countries find themselves on the wrong side of the global digital divide.

The good news is that a mobile revolution is sweeping the continent and bridging this gap. More Africans have access to a mobile phone than clean drinking water, according to Jan Hutton, telecoms director at Nielsen, a market-research firm. After Asia, Africa is the world’s largest mobile phone market, with 700m mobile connections. By 2016, there will be 1 billion—a mobile phone for nearly every person, according to a 2012 report by financial services firms Frontier Advisory and Deloitte.

While not every mobile phone has social networking capabilities, this is changing too. At the end of 2012, smartphone users accounted for 6% of Africa’s total mobile subscriptions; this share is forecast to rise to 18% by 2017, according to Thecla Mbongue, a senior analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, a market-research firm.

Once mobile take-up reaches critical mass, social media may well become the only game in town. Many political parties realise that they need to be ahead of the game now if they are to win votes in the future.

At a conference on political communication held in Cape Town in November 2012, opposition parties from the Seychelles to South Sudan highlighted the rising significance of social media in their communications strategies. All agreed that starting the right conversations on social media and steering engaged followers in the right direction are the keys to future success. These online conversations among many individuals are gradually supplanting the one-way “broadcast model” of communications. 

In Botswana voters no longer trust the media and are turning to social networks for their news, reported Winfred Rasina, spokesman for the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD). He spends an average of two-and-a-half hours daily updating the BMD’s Facebook page and interacting with potential voters.

Only 7% of its citizens access the internet, according to the International Telecommunication Union. But “Botswana has a population of only 2m people, which means that word of mouth travels quickly,” he says.

Trust in traditional media is in decline, particularly among the youth, says Fungisai Sithole, chief of staff of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.

“The current generation does not want to be treated as the ‘other’. They want to be engaged, they want to talk, they want to contribute,” she says. To get around the drawback of low internet access and the high cost of smartphones, the party has developed a bespoke platform that uses text messages to interact with voters and members.

Another party finding innovative ways to reach the electorate is the Civic United Front (CUF) in Tanzania. It has linked its social media platforms with popular youth websites and trained a team of young activists to respond to issues.

Abdul Kambaya, CUF’s national director for publicity, says that the success of this strategy is evident from the response it has elicited from its opponents: the party’s website was hacked and completely destroyed six months ago.

This is a cautionary tale. As more people begin to use social media for political engagement, so too will governments increase their efforts to curtail it. Finding ways to circumvent state censorship with sophisticated social media strategies will be a key objective for African opposition parties in the years ahead.

The mobile revolution is a potential game-changer in Africa, where media gatekeepers have exerted too much power for too long. Once the social media groundswell breaks, a political tipping point may well follow.

Workers, tourists and others cram the neon shadows of the sidewalks, clutching engorged wallets and sleek plastic bags. The luxury goods in the shop fronts of polished glass and mood lighting beckon their business. Lots of money changes hands. Many shiny, new items are purchased. This is the apotheosis of globalisation, as we know it best: big companies, handsome profits, fancy boardrooms, high-flying executives, topquality goods.

This is not the globalisation I have come to Nathan Road to see. I know I am getting closer to my destination when an Asian gentleman outside a Rolex store approaches. “Want nice watch? Mister, nice Rolex for you? I give you best price.”

Despite admiring his brazen attempts to shift fakes not a metre outside a shop displaying the genuine articles, I shrug him off and turn into a narrow passage that takes me to the heart of a building called—in Hong Kong’s typically optimistic style— Chungking Mansions.

This three-towered utilitarian block is one of Hong Kong’s most notorious buildings. Unlikely as it may seem, it is one of the major drivers of Africa’s technological revolution.

The building’s history is infamous. Erected in 1961 to fulfil Hong Kong’s insatiable need for low-cost housing, it soon turned into one of the most legendary stops on Asia’s hippy backpacker trail, thanks to the proliferation of tiny, cheap guesthouses on its upper floors, many still operating.

These cheap tourists enticed merchants of tacky goods, whose stalls swamped the building’s lower floors. In turn, this activity attracted illegal immigrants, drug  dealers and prostitutes, turning Chungking into Hong Kong’s seediest underbelly; a place that locals avoided completely and even police feared to tread.

In recent years, the place has cleaned up its act somewhat, but still offers the city’s cheapest accommodation. It is home to a large South Asian community (primarily Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) and plenty of cheap tat: luggage, souvenirs, fake football shirts, etc. But in the last decade or so, shopkeepers have introduced a new product which has kept Chungking Mansions ticking: the mobile phone.

Pause and shift your geographical attention to the markets of Africa, a continent that has also embraced the mobile phone in recent years. The informal nature of this business makes it difficult to cite exact figures, but it is likely that most mobiles sold in Africa are not traded through official, licensed channels. They are hawked in markets or sold in small family-run shops displaying a dizzying array of brands and phone styles, many unfamiliar.

Often the handsets are simply lined up on shelves, a tangle of headsets and charger cables in a box at the vendor’s feet. While quality may be unpredictable, price is not. These phones are inexpensive, much cheaper than their equivalents sold in slick shops or by service providers. Without these low-priced phones, the African telecommunications revolution may never have gotten off the ground. But where do they come from? And how do they get here?

The first question is easy. Their provenance is China, which makes the lion’s share of the world’s mobile handsets. According to figures released by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country produced over 915m handsets in the first three quarters of 2012. By way of comparison, analytics firm Gartner estimates that around 1.2 billion handsets were sold throughout the world in this period. While China manufactures many smartphones too (including the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy series), it specialises in the budget handsets favoured in Africa, meaning that the vast majority of handsets in Africa will have been made in China.

The more interesting question is how these cheap Chinese phones reach Africa’s markets from the huge factories in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two major cities on the mainland north of Hong Kong. It is a story of low-end, informal globalisation on a massive scale—with dingy Chungking Mansions as its backdrop.

For African traders, there are obvious barriers to the Chinese factories and handset wholesalers. The first is language. Mainland China does not, as a rule, speak English, and African traders are yet to pick up Cantonese or Mandarin in any significant numbers.

Visas are another obstacle. China requires citizens of most countries to acquire visas in advance. This can be difficult for a small-scale African businessman who might not be able to demonstrate the necessary financial proof that he is economically independent. A third is connections. The factories are spread out around the sprawling megalopolis of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, difficult to find unless you know in advance exactly where you are going. All this makes it hard for traders to find the products or negotiate for them.

The simple solution is Hong Kong: easily accessible with many flights linking it to African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa. The island’s relaxed entry policy means that most nationalities can get in without a visa. Much of the city’s business is conducted in English so communication is easy. For the business connections: simply head to Chungking Mansions, take the stairs to the first floor, and start negotiating with the dozens of wholesalers operating from tiny shops filling the towers with every possible kind of handset.

The importance of Chungking Mansions to the African telecommunications boom cannot be overestimated. Academic Gordon Mathews of the Chinese University of Hong Kong spent five years studying the building and wrote a book on it called “Ghetto at the Centre of the World”. In 2009 some 20% of all handsets in Africa, about 10m, physically passed through this building, he estimated. And even more arrived in Africa thanks to deals made and business relationships formed within its walls.

“Low-end globalisation is globalisation not as practised by the big multinationals with their batteries of lawyers and their billion-dollar budgets,” Mr Mathews said in an interview with CNN. “It’s globalisation done by individual traders carrying goods in their suitcases back and forth from their home countries.”

To understand Mr Mathews, I have come to Chungking Mansions to buy phones. A Zambian friend has asked me to buy 20 handsets for a maximum of $15 each, which he intends to sell in a rural Zambian town.

This puts me in the same position as many would-be cellular entrepreneurs who are drawn from thousands of miles away by the building’s whispered but wellknown reputation as a place where good business is done. My first lesson is that my order is laughably small. While some shops deal in hundreds of handsets, most only accept orders of a thousand handsets. One hopeful merchant even offered the exclusive rights to import his product into my country of choice.

My tiny order and small budget rule out some of the more serious-looking shops. They sell genuine new and used phones that cost the same as in any other shop in Hong Kong, beyond the prescribed budget. Some of them also sell “fakes”, exact replicas of top-brand originals in appearance, and “used fakes”, second-hand handsets where the genuine exterior has been preserved but the electronics inside have been replaced. These sell for significantly less, but no shopkeepers would even admit the existence of potentially illegal goods to first-time, unproven buyers like myself.

“China phones”, however, are affordable. Chinese companies manufacture these handsets and brand them with their own logo. Often, they bear a striking resemblance to premium brands, but crucially, do not claim to be the real thing (except one obvious iPhone knockoff that carried a picture of a smiling Steve Jobs on the home screen). These phones are enormously popular in some parts of Africa, particularly Nigeria, as they offer more features than well-known name-brand phones at a fraction of the price.

Take, for example, the phones I ended up buying. The KGtel 8520 is made by a Chinese firm I have never heard of, and modelled on the BlackBerry 8520. Even the software looks the same. There are some obvious differences, of course, most notably it is a bit thicker, lacks a trackpad and does not connect to the BlackBerry Messenger services. But it also has features that the BlackBerry does not, such as a torch and dual-SIM capability, which allows the phone to run SIM cards from two different networks at the same time.

Then there is the price. The KGtel sells for $15 in Chungking, while the current BlackBerry equivalent goes for about $250. This huge price difference provides the potential for serious profit. Mickey, a Nigerian trader, can stuff his suitcase with 600 similarly-priced phones and sell them at home for triple the price, a conservative estimate, he says. For his outlay of $9,000 he can recoup $27,000, which—after travel, expenses, tariffs and/or the inevitable cut paid to customs officials—is still a profit of around $15,000. In other African countries with less supply and higher selling prices, the margins are even wider. My Zambian friend reckons he can get between $80 and $90 a handset.

As I collect the phones, I suddenly realise why traders get away with such hefty margins. I am nearly out the door when the shopkeeper’s assistant—another Nigerian, employed to bring in customers and translate—slips something into my hand. “These are the stickers,” he says. “Keep them safe.” I look down, and there are 20 stickers each bearing the BlackBerry name and logo, designed to fit perfectly into a an indent on the KGtel handset. It is a deception that would not fool anyone who has seen a BlackBerry, but there are many in Africa who have not.

These days, as the trade in mobiles from China to Africa has become more established, the importance of Chungking Mansions is decreasing. The serious players in the industry—the ones who import containers rather than suitcases of phones—now deal directly with mainland factories. Some of the more adventurous smaller traders, looking for a better deal, are also venturing across the border, where China’s recent economic progress is making it easier to do business. This is reflected in Kenya Airways announcing in April 2013 that they are introducing direct flights between Nairobi and Guangzhou.

These new developments should not detract from Chungking Mansions’s continuing significance as a gateway for African traders into China. It will retain its place in history as the predominant single physical space that propelled Africa’s mobile boom. It remains a symbol of the informal, low-end globalisation which expedited Africa’s high-tech transformation.

The Nigerian music piracy system became a highly successful—albeit illegal—model for the distribution of hardcopy music that fed the voracious demand for musical entertainment in Nigeria. About four years ago, the police and the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) began cracking down on illegally-copied CDs and movies. Despite this enforcement, in 2011 the NCC seized over 6m fake copies of music, books, and software with a street value of $4.6m.

The exact cost of piracy—in lost taxes to the government and revenue to artists—is unknown, but given the quantities, undoubtedly vast. 

But consumers in Nigeria and the continent have changed their tune and no longer demand music in CD format. Instead, the mobile phone has become one of the primary devices for buying and selling music.

Consumers in Africa use phones not just for talking but also for downloading and listening to music, says Julie Rey, research director of Com World Series, an organiser of digital business events. Consumers also use phones for financial services, social networking and video games. By the end of 2012, Africa had 750m mobile phone subscribers, and it will have 1 billion by the end of 2015, according to Informa Telecoms and Media, a United Kingdom-based telecoms and media consultancy.

“Digital music is one of many potential driving forces” of the increase in mobile data plan subscriptions in Africa, says Guillermo Escofet, a senior analyst at Informa. People are willing to pay for a legitimate service, as the growth of pay-for digital music shows.

The growth in Africa far outpaces the rest of the world. Informa estimates that mobile music revenue in Africa will be $474m by 2016, more than double the 2012 estimate of $220m. By comparison, North America’s revenue in 2016 will be $824m, up only slightly from $708m in 2012.

Mobile phone penetration in Africa exploded in the mid-2000s as pay-as you-go SIM cards and cheap mobile phones became readily available on the market. There were 54m new mobile phone subscriptions in West Africa in 2007 alone, according to Informa. The digital music market is set for similar growth across Africa in coming years.

Major record companies like Universal, EMI and Sony who dominate the music industry outside of Africa have so far failed to keep up with the demand for music in Africa. They have ignored the African market because they have no knowledge of how to conduct business in it. “The music industry in Africa is completely unstructured and informal,” Mr Escofet says. “If you want to build up a catalogue of music in Nigeria, you have to speak to hundreds of people. In the West, you only have to speak to four labels and you have 90% of the market covered. In Africa, it’s completely fragmented.”

African markets, apart from South Africa’s developed music market, do not have the label tradition, says Karen Liebenberg, general manager at Mondia Media South Africa, a digital entertainment company. Instead artists sign deals directly with mobile operators. This makes it harder for majors to do business in Africa. “The major labels do not have representatives on the ground,” she says. “This has come with huge problems [in] collecting and distributing rights money.”

The technology involved in successful digital distribution is also complicated for a first-time entrant into the digital market. “It’s not that they’re not digitally savvy,” she says, “but they’ve never had to follow those processes. There is a massive gap in understanding the technology.”

Infrastructure shortcomings have slowed the launch of digital music platforms to an African audience. “Relying on satellites is costly,” Com World Series’s Ms Rey says. But fibre optic development to the continent is making broadband cheaper and more widely available, she adds.

With the rise of smartphones, tablets and faster internet speeds, consumers can increasingly bypass costly broadband packages and download music directly onto their portable devices. Wireless service providers have been quick to catch on to the changing market. “Operators are looking to increase revenues by increasing data downloads,” Ms Rey says. “They are trying to build links with the music business to increase revenue.”

In the meantime, smaller providers have stepped in to fill the void. France Telecom’s Orange launched unlimited music streaming in Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritius earlier this year. “Not only does this incentivise users to buy an operator’s most expensive data plan, but it also supposedly keeps users more loyal,” Mr Escofet says.

The French provider is hoping to replicate the success of Spotify, the popular Swedish online music service, which is still unavailable to most of the continent. Local digital platforms are also racing to fill the market niche created by Spotify’s absence. Spinlet, a Nigerian music download platform, was launched in May 2012 and had 200,000 BlackBerry and Android users just four months later, says Eric Idiahi, the company’s chief executive. “Africa is our market,” he adds, naming South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the largest consumers of Spinlet’s product.

“We’re looking at Africa as one of the fastest-growing regions in the world,” says Gerrit Schumann, CEO of German company Simfy, which launched its music streaming service for desktop computers and smartphones in South Africa in August 2012. “We’ve looked at Africa as a fantastic opportunity for growth and South Africa is a natural starting point,” Mr Schumann says. “Our goal is to expand across all of Africa. Potentially in five years time, 30% to 40% of our customer base could be coming from Africa.”

Menyou, a Swedish digital platform, launched its Africa service in early 2012. “Our first music content was African,” says Kisito Diene, Menyou’s Africa manager. “This is the first time a music company is starting from an African point of view and then spreads outwards.”

Menyou’s unique selling point is that anyone can sell music on the digital platform, meaning that artists can upload their own music, share it with fans and make money. This cuts out the record label (Menyou takes 10% of the income, and the artist or aggregator takes the rest), meaning the artist can take a better cut and retains ownership rights. Crucially, the music is aimed at an African audience and taps into the rich resource provided by Africans living abroad.

“The African diaspora want productions from their own countries but they have to go to Clignancourt [in Paris] or Harlem [in New York] to buy CDs. Now we make it available cheaply on the internet. Most record companies have no knowledge of the African market so they just put a big X on it,” says Mr Diene, a Senegalese who ran some of Dakar’s most successful live clubs before joining Menyou. “African music is not available on the market and we are making that music available.”

As the industry grows, royalty collection societies, songwriters and performers will need to form strong bonds to avoid exploitation by more experienced industry players such as labels, distributors or mobile operators.

Technology such as the ring-back tone, where the owner of the number can set a song for the caller to hear instead of the standard ringing tone, is dominating the digital music market in Africa. The sale of ring-back tones is generating 95% of the digital music revenue in South Africa, with many Indian-owned companies now major players in this market, Mondia’s Ms Liebenberg says. As large corporations, they can afford to offer substantial cash advances to record labels to own digital rights to their catalogues.

They use this ownership as leverage with the mobile operators to work solely with them. The cellular company takes 70% of the profits, leaving 30% for the owner of the music rights, Ms Liebenberg says. The artist, unsurprisingly, is at the very bottom of the revenue chain.

Despite the move from CD to online music buying, piracy continues to be a major problem. Centralised data collection of the African music market does not exist, making it impossible to determine the economic impact of piracy on the continent. But according to Frontier Economics, a UK-based consulting firm, the world value of digitally-pirated music, movies and software may reach $80 billion to $240 billion by 2015, a huge margin because of the nature of this illegal business.

Menyou’s Mr Diene says that new ways of buying music—such as his company’s formula of cutting out the middleman and making digital music cheaper for the consumer and more profitable for the artist—could be a way of countering piracy in Africa. “I am convinced that most people prefer not to buy music because they feel ripped off,” Mr Diene says. “This would change if they saw that the artist is getting a good part of the money.”

The digital music market will echo the fast rise in cheaper smartphones and technology, such as the inexpensive ring-back tones popular with the working classes. “There is no question that the mobile phone is the way they [Africans] want to get their music,” Ms Liebenberg says. “Online [music distribution] will be very slow to roll out because of internet penetration but in terms of mobile, without question, things will change very quickly.”

The actions taken by these big men merely confirm radio’s supremacy in Africa. It may be old technology, but it is still relevant and appropriate. While not everybody owns a radio, most people have access to one. 

Zimbabweans have grown adept at finding alternatives to the state mouthpiece, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC). A combination of old and new technology permits people to hear stories that the authorities in Harare prefer they did not. Short-wave is one of the old-school tools people have counted on for decades. A number of radio stations based outside of Zimbabwe’s borders rely on reports from in-country correspondents who use mobile phones and the internet, particularly social media, to send their reports to distant studios.

Stations such as SW Radio Africa, the Voice of the People, and Studio 7, staffed mostly by Zimbabweans, are based as far afield as Johannesburg, Washington and London. They reach their target market using old-fashioned high-frequency transmitters originally built, for the most part, to broadcast news during the Second World War.

Barely a fraction of the world’s public who listened to short-wave 50 years ago is listenin today. In Zimbabwe, however, FM frequencies are restricted to the ZBC and a select few with friends in high places. But short-wave has the advantage of sending signals over vast distances, irrespective of borders and local broadcasting restrictions.

Throughout today’s modern digital world, short-wave radio is given short shrift. But in Zimbabwe, on the verge of holding presidential elections, police have staged a nation-wide crackdown, declaring possession of short-wave radios illegal, without any basis in law. Radio Dialogue, a local community station based in Bulawayo, has been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain an FM licence. Instead, it uses short-wave to send its signal around the world to an audience that is within shouting distance of its studios.

Just before the constitutional referendum held in March, police raided the station and seized several dozen short-wave radios. Its manager, Zenzele Ndebele, was charged with contravening import-export regulations.

Next door in South Africa, one of the lesser-known legacies of apartheid is the near impossibility of buying a short-wave receiver. During the 1970s the National Party government attempted to dissuade South Africans from listening to foreign broadcasts, particularly ones they deemed undesirable. To satisfy the listening public, they built one of the world’s most advanced FM transmitter networks to carry South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) programming.

A mixture of music and carefully vetted talk shows went out on African-language stations previously known as the Bantu services. Pretoria’s hope at the time was that the clear sounds of an FM signal would stop people from listening to the poor audio quality of short wave stations such as the ANC’s Radio Freedom, the BBC World Service, Radio Havana Cuba and Radio Moscow.

Zimbabwe is not the only country where short-wave is used to bypass restrictive broadcast legislation. Pirate, or clandestine short-wave stations, often staffed by members of the target country’s diaspora, use high-frequency transmitters to send uncensored programming to dozens of countries, including Libya, Madagascar, Sudan, Western Sahara and all the states in the Horn of Africa. 

In Eritrea, President Isaias Afewerki is determined not to give dissenting voices any space on the airwaves. He forbids any radio service that is not the state operator. He also places restrictions on the issuing of import permits for radios, making it difficult for Eritreans to buy the most basic of receivers in local shops.

The general public, whether in Eritrea or the remote equatorial rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, always finds ways to bypass these restrictions. The Africa services of the BBC and Radio France Internationale are filled with the voices and SMS messages of people who somehow manage to find a way of listening to banned broadcasts.

Without laying a single centimetre of copper wiring, the mobile phone has allowed much of Africa to skip landline technology and move straight to digital. More importantly, the cellphone has played a leading role in turning radio into a social tool.

Radios no longer simply transmit. They also receive. The convergence between these two communications devices has created a new community and international platform for lone, isolated voices. The list of radio stations that do not have an SMS or social network relationship with their listeners, despite their location, is getting increasingly shorter. Any station that fails to interact with its public risks going the way of the dodo.

The Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services do not tolerate content or listener comment criticising King Mswati. Social media and proximity to South Africa provide a partial outlet for his critics. On any given day, considerable traffic on Facebook is devoted to denigrating the absolute nature of the monarch’s reign.

When Swazis want an update on current affairs, they do not have to listen to his majesty’s voice or the uninspiring Voice of the Church radio station. They can turn their radio dial to one of the many SABC stations that can be picked up in various parts of the country, Ligwalagwala FM and Ukhozi FM in particular.

In Zimbabwe, and to a lesser extent in Swaziland, the great thirst for credible and non-state content has strongly boosted digital technology. In virtually any part of Zimbabwe where there is a cluster of houses, chances are there will be a satellite dish affixed to some if not most of the homes. Although some of the dishes are linked to a DSTV pay-TV subscription, most are not because it is too expensive.

Instead Zimbabweans in their millions are watching South African television and listening to South African radio using relatively inexpensive free-to-air satellite receivers commonly known as Wiztechs. South Africa’s SABC 1 and Metro FM have loyal and significant followings north of the country’s Limpopo River.

Pirate radio stations have also discovered the added value satellite offers them. The infrastructure is already in place. Unlike short-wave radio, most people, especially in urban areas, have access to a dish. In the not-too-distant future it will be as easy to listen to an alternative Zimbabwean newscast as it is to watch Generations, a popular SABC soap opera.

If they want to secure an audience for the ZBC, authorities in Harare will have to do much more than confiscate short-wave radios. Expect a crackdown on Wiztechs prior to presidential elections due to be held later this year.

Video and digital did not kill the radio star. Radio is stronger than ever in Africa, thanks largely to its ability to absorb and adapt to changing technology.

Deposed despots, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, would agree.

The 44-year-old farmer finishes counting at 149 and takes out his cellphone. He enters the number into a message and hits the send button. A few seconds later, he receives a text message with the latest price of maize in Nairobi. He puts the phone back in his overall pocket, content that he knows how much he will earn from these bags of maize.

Mr Mwangi is one of 6,400 farmers in Kenya taking advantage of this new high-tech service, powered by M-Farm, according to Jimmy Wambua, an M-Farm spokesman. Three young software developers in their early to mid-twenties started the company in 2011 to provide market prices to farmers. Previously, Mr Mwangi sold his maize to brokers that arrived with trucks and dictated the maize price. He had no way of finding out the actual market price and often felt cheated. Now, not only does he know how much he can demand but he is able to come together with other farmers and command higher prices.

M-Farm is one of many services that have been developed in the last five years on the back of Kenya’s lead in information and communications technology (ICT), particularly mobile phones. An increasing number of young Kenyans are developing software, apps and cellphone-based programmes to help small-scale farmers increase their agricultural skills and yields. At the most recent PivotEast, East Africa’s premier mobile start-ups competition and conference, held in June 2012, three out of five finalists were young entrepreneurs who had created agrarian apps.

Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy, earning over 24.2% of the country’s $33 billion GDP and employing 75% of the country’s workforce. Farmers, mostly working on smallholdings of less than five acres, produce the bulk of Kenya’s cash and food crops such as tea and coffee, the country’s largest agricultural exports, and maize, Kenya’s staple. While their production is quite considerable, Kenya’s rural areas remain the country’s poorest.

In addition to the price information, M-Farm offers farmers the chance to sell their crops collectively and to buy their seed, fertilisers and other inputs together, simply by using their mobile phone or logging on to the M-Farm website. Each M-Farm agent aggregates the produce of about 100 farmers and sells it as one lot. The agents also sell seeds, fertiliser and other inputs in bulk at discount prices. Everyone gains as the farmers earn more for their crops and the bulk buyers and sellers reduce the number of farms they visit.

M-Farm collects wholesale market price information on 42 crops in five markets in Kenya: Nairobi, the capital; Mombasa, on the coast; Kisumu, Eldoret and Nakuru in the west. The company employs two full-time college-educated independent agents to collect prices from wholesale traders located in each market. Farmers can then use a free mobile app or send an SMS request to see the latest information on specific crops.

Another mobile phone service is iCow. One of its products helps beef farmers track their cows’ gestation periods to increase livestock numbers. Farmers use an SMS code to register their cows and their insemination date. The service then sends SMS prompts to the registered farmer on the expected date for calving, or the best days for new insemination. The service also sends weekly SMS messages to subscribers with tips on breeding, nutrition, milk production efficiency, and other best dairy practices.

iCow also posts the location of the nearest veterinarian or artificial insemination specialist on its website, or sends farmers an SMS with the information. Through its iCow Soko (market in Swahili) farmers can trade livestock and livestock by-products on their cellphones.

Another web and mobile-based tech programme is Kilimo Salama, which means “safe farming” in Swahili. Run by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA), part of a Swiss agribusiness operating in 90 countries, in partnership with UAP Insurance of Kenya, and Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest mobile network operator, it offers crop insurance against drought or excessive rains. Smallholders purchase cover through local agro-dealers while buying their seeds, fertiliser and insecticides. Using solarpowered weather stations, Kilimo Salama collects information about extreme weather that may reduce yields and sends farmers these reports via SMS.

If the company’s climate station registers extreme weather, it sends insured farmers a mobile money payment that covers the costs of their seeds, fertiliser and other inputs such as insecticide that have been insured. Even if the entire crop is lost, the insurer provides the farmer with the funds to buy next season’s seeds.

Premiums are calculated based on the area’s drought risk. Farmers split the price with seed and other agribusinesses by each paying 5% on average on top of the price of a bag of seeds. According to the SFSA website, a farmer can insure a $2 bag of seed for ten cents. If there is a drought, for example, the farmer will receive a payout of two dollars for each bag and can begin afresh at the next growing season. Through Kilimo Salama Plus, farmers can also insure their total anticipated harvest value by paying the full premium amount.

Safaricom’s M-Pesa, a mobile phone money transfer system, has been at the forefront of Kenya’s agri-technological innovations. About half of Kenya’s estimated 43m people use M-Pesa. Not only can farmers make and receive payments for seeds and crops, but financial institutions, such as savings and credit cooperatives and microfinance schemes, can disburse loans and collect payments. Almost all financial institutions in Kenya now offer M-Pesa services. Coupled with the company’s saving and credit service, M-Shwari (cool or calm in Swahili), M-Pesa is also bringing farmers into the formal banking system.

Have farmers benefited from this information and communications technology innovation? Yes. Technology has boosted farmers’ earnings. Access to market information through cellphones led to an increase in farmers’ incomes of between 16.5% and 36% in Uganda, and 10% in Ghana, according to a 2012 World Bank report. A recent Vodafone report estimates a potential increase of $48 billion in agricultural income in Africa by 2020 due to the spread of mobile technology.

In Kenya’s central Kinangop region, farmers who sold collectively more than doubled their receipts for produce such as snow peas and sugar snap peas, says M-Farm’s Mr Wambua.

“Farmers previously got from 5 shillings [$0.06] per kilo for snow peas, 40 shillings [$0.48] if they were lucky. Now, they get up to 90 shillings [$1.07] per kilo,” he says. M-Farm-subscribed growers also say that access to current market information has given them a transparent bargaining platform to use when selling individually to brokers or middlemen.

Innovation in agricultural IT is concentrated in two areas. The first is delivering via mobile phones information such as market prices and tips to improve crop and animal husbandry. The second is extension of financial services, such as M-Pesa’s mobile money system. While these innovations have greatly improved access to market information and financial services, there remains a massive gap in improving access to markets once the crops are harvested.

The typical chain for horticultural produce in Kenya involves a series of middlemen ranging from transporters to wholesalers to retailers. Streamlining this often cumbersome and lengthy process would provide farmers with higher prices and consumers with cheaper products. The Kenyan government has also jumped on the ICT bandwagon.

In April 2013 the agriculture ministry announced that it would collect and distribute real-time market information to farmers. Over the next 18 months, the government plans to supply 1,450 laptops and smartphones to agricultural extension officers to collect and post these reports.

But it is technology driven by the private sector that is making significant strides in helping farmers. Kenya’s agriculture will require considerably more government support in the future.

The In Amenas hostage siege led to the deaths of at least 38 civilians and 29 militants. Shortly after this attack, newspapers reported that several high-ranking officials were concerned about the risks of third-generation (3G) telecommunications standards, particularly in the government’s fight against terrorism. The Daily Dawn, an Algerian newspaper, cited anonymous sources, presumably close to the government, that revealed “the wider security environment in the Sahel” is the real reason behind the delay. “What happened at In Amenas, including the publishing of photos, has been aimed at misleading public opinion.”

Many activists interpret the government’s ongoing postponement of the provision of 3G as yet another attempt to shackle dissent. Creaking telecommunications standards and a complex set of internet laws and regulations, particularly aimed at controlling information on social media sites, make anti-government activism in Algeria increasingly complicated.

The government seems intent on hiding behind the shield of one of the world’s most archaic information and communications frameworks.

During the Arab uprisings two years ago, social media platforms surfaced as a force of popular empowerment. Bloggers throughout North Africa and the Middle East helped to rally mass street demonstrations, which led Tunisia and Egypt to revolution, Morocco to simulate reform and Libya into civil war.

Amidst such sweeping political change across the region, Algeria emerged as the only country in the Maghreb where the government retains a firm grip on the country, despite widespread poverty and high unemployment, particularly among Algeria’s youth.

Pundits attempting to explain what has come to be known as “Algerian exceptionalism” are quick to point to the country’s history—in particular the civil war in the 1990s, which cost more than 150,000 lives—to argue that Algerians favour political stability over what might end in chaos and armed conflict.

Many Algerians are hardened after their own long struggle against Islamic extremists. They watch with trepidation the resurgence of Islamists, particularly of the violent Salafi-jihadist stripe, in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt. Many say this fear of violence was vindicated during Algeria’s 2012 legislative elections, which saw the defeat of the Islamists, although opposition forces have contested the official results. The voters apparently revealed that they favour the devil they know.

Explaining Algeria’s “exceptionalism” through its history and experience with Islamic radicalism, however, is misleading. Since the Arab spring, social activism and demands for regime change have swollen.

But “le pouvoir” (“the power”)—the government and the secret services, the Département du Renseignement et de la Securité (DRS)—have quickly battered protesters and dissidents. 

Often overlooked is the other weapon the government and the DRS wield to defend their dominance: their unyielding grip on information and communications technology, particularly mobile phones and the internet’s social networks.

“With the Arab revolutions, the Algerian regime suddenly realised to what extent Facebook and Twitter could become a real threat to their authority,” explained Yacine Zaid, a blogger and senior member of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights.

“The money spent on fake Facebook profiles and groups has increased dramatically over the past two years,” explained Mr Zaid, who created his blog in 2007, becoming one of Algeria’s first bloggers. “The amount of intimidation I experience, including direct threats to kill me, has grown unprecedentedly in past months and currently amounts to several instances per day,” he added during an interview in March 2013.

This internet bullying is often called computer-generated baltagy (criminal or thief in Arabic), referring to the violent thugs that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak unleashed against street protesters during the 2011 uprising. “The Algerian baltagy is increasingly engaged in a cyber-war with militants,” explained an Algerian blogger who wished to remain anonymous.

“One of the most important techniques to contain militants is to publish false allegations and private information—such as telephone numbers, family pictures and addresses—through pro-regime blogs and newspapers in order to defame and intimidate oppositional forces,” he added. “This makes it more difficult to receive reliable information from social media websites.”

Besides cyber bullying, numerous laws, regulations and the country’s timeworn infrastructure make the Algerian internet a difficult site for dissidence. In 2009 Algerian authorities adopted a law criminalising online activity that runs “contrary to public order or decency”. As a result, many regime-controlled internet cafés—the most popular places for Algerians to connect to the world wide web—now have closed-circuit television cameras recording the faces of their online customers.

Owning a website bearing the Algerian country code top-level domain, .dz, (derived from Dzayer, the local name for Algeria), is next to impossible. “Applications need to pass through meticulous bureaucratic vouching to guarantee the website will be used according to the terms and conditions set by the authorities,” explained Mohammed Larbi Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat who now lives in exile in London. “This is why most Algerian websites have other domain names such as .org, .com and .net.”

Adding to these complications is the Algerian internet’s notorious sluggishness. Most users rely on old-fashioned dial-up connections. Ookla, a US company which compares download speeds, ranks Algeria’s velocity near the bottom, 178 out of 182 countries.

Very few Algerians go online, only 5.2m or 14% of the nation’s 36m population, making it one of the world’s least connected countries, and the 34th least connected of 54 African countries. The few that go online are not regular, daily internet users, but casual ones, browsing the net mostly while sipping coffee at cyber cafés. The government is deliberately manipulating internet speed and connectivity, argued Mr Zitout. “The infrastructure for a faster and higher level of internet connectivity is already there, but the regime is unwilling to use it,” he said. 

Mobile phone technology in Algeria is also limited, mostly by outdated creaking equipment and the state-run telecoms Algérie Telecom, that operates without competition. Mobile phones were crucial during the 2009 Iranian elections and the Arab spring. Protestors used them not only to call demonstrators to rallies but uploaded video footage that highlighted the brutal police crackdowns.

But Algeria lacks 3G and fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications standards, which permit whizzy and faster sharing of messages, photos and videos.

Despite these barriers, insurgents still turn to the internet because newspapers, radio and television—under strict government control—do not provide a platform for protest. In 2013 Reporters Without Borders placed Algeria close to the bottom in press freedom, with a ranking of 125 out of 179 countries.

“The regime employs a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to control the media,” Mr Zitout said. “The ‘carrot’ element is provided by symbolic charges, generous tax schemes and advertising contracts—which are often the most important sources of income—for those newspapers that ‘behave well.’” At the same time, “the regime imposes printing charges and taxes, encourages journalist intimidation and bans advertising contracts for newspapers critical of the regime. This makes most newspapers that do not adopt a pro-regime line unsustainable,” Mr Zitout concluded.

The regime’s increasingly elaborate effort to control modern technology underlines its fear of the internet. Given the absence of a free press and modern phone and internet technology, the opposition will continue to rely on its snail-like dial-up connections to social media sites. Algeria remains “exceptional” and stable, unlike turbulent Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.