By Gregory Mthembu-Salter A well-functioning electoral management body (EMB) does not guarantee a good election, but a dysfunctional EMB almost certainly guarantees a bad one. The question, therefore, of how to improve the workings of Africa's EMBs is of critical importance to the democratic development of the continent.
Andrew Ellis, Director of Operations at International IDEA, tackled the subject head-on at the conference currently under way in Johannesburg, South Africa on sustaining Africa's democratic momentum, presenting International IDEA's conclusions about effective EMBs, which the organisation has recently published as a handbook.
According to Ellis, what matters with EMBs is not so much their formal independence from the government – useful as this is – but the extent to which this is true in practice. This means, said Ellis, EMBs must be adequately funded and resourced, they must have a continuous life rather than being hastily assembled shortly before an election, and they should have the capacity to train their staff to high standards, and retain their services long enough to build the institutional memory of the EMB.
Ellis called on donors to contribute to the sustainability of Africa's EMBs by assisting them well in advance of elections rather than merely on their eve, and also by not being overly focused on expensive technical 'solutions' that could often cause as many problems as they solved.
Ellis' presentation was followed by a sobering summary of the state of EMBs in West Africa given by Dr Abderhamane Niang, the director-general of the Cabinet d'Expert en Matière Electorale et de Gouvernance in Mali. West Africa's EMBs, said Niang, suffered from all the pitfalls Ellis had just warned of, being subject to debilitating political interference, including partisan political appointees at senior level and deliberately insufficient funding. Niang said the dissolution of West Africa's EMBs after an election, and their hurried reconstitution before the next one was all too common, and bemoaned the fact that many lacked the will, the means or both to challenge violations of electoral law, particularly by the ruling party.
A number of delegates from other parts of the continent observed after the session that the challenges Niang had highlighted were by no means unique to West Africa. The Angolan electoral commission, it transpires, remains almost entirely without funds, and has no telephones or permanent premises, while the electoral commission in the Democratic Republic of Congo has just survived a bid to slash its funding in the wake of last year's successful general elections, thanks to the last minute intervention of the prime minister.
Gregory Mthembu-Salter is an independent writer on African political economy based in Cape Town, South Africa
The views expressed here are the author’s own, and do not necessarily represent the views of International IDEA, its Board or its Council members.
