Does Africa’s supposed digital disadvantage protect it from election interference?

With about 13 African countries coming from the polls in 2024 and others  preparing for municipal elections in 2026, some analysts suggest, perhaps a bit too  confidently, that African countries have been spared the worst of election interference  simply because they are not yet as digitally advanced as other states in the world. But  is the continent really safeguarded, or do we just minimise the effect of interference by digital technologies? 

As Africa undergoes a stagnation in its democratisation, increased attention is being  paid to countries that still uphold democratic principles. This has prompted observers to  assess how these nations are adhering to democracy or taking a decisive shift  towards other autocratic ways. Elections are regarded as a sign of whether a democratic government exists. Elections are deemed to be democratic when they are free, fair, participatory, credible, competitive and legitimate, a criterion that African countries seem to fall short of meeting considering the violence that follows claims of election meddling through stuffing ballot boxes, multiple voting or tampering with vote counts. 

Still, many argue that things could be worse if digital interference ever decided to join the party. But digital interference has certainly been occurring in Africa, just not with the same intensity or visibility as in more technologically advanced states. 

These states have integrated high-level digital  infrastructure, innovation-driven economies and widespread access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Countries such as the United States,  the United Kingdom, Russia and China are leaders in artificial intelligence (AI),  cybersecurity, data science and digital governance. Although they exhibit technological capabilities, they also, statistically, face heightened risks of election interference because of extensive internet penetration and widespread dependence on digital infrastructure.  

Online  platforms such as Facebook, X, and YouTube become arenas for misinformation, disinformation and algorithmic manipulation. Social media bots, fake accounts and data-driven micro-targeting are used to spread false information and polarise public opinion. A study by Tidal Cyber identified the US, the UK and South Korea as the top countries facing the highest levels of election cyber interference threats. In these high-powered states, elections aren’t just about domestic politics, they can tilt global alliances and shake economic systems. It’s no great mystery why Russia interfered in US elections. With Nato, trade deals and sanctions in the mix, the stakes are too big to ignore.

Using the American 2016 presidential elections as an example, Russian interference  was carried out largely through digital means. Ironically, the scale and effectiveness of such interference owes much to the very internet infrastructure and digital dependence  that advanced economies proudly wear as badges of progress. 

Contrary to this, the International Telecommunication Union puts Africa’s internet  penetration rate at just under 44%, significantly lower than the global average. To  analysts, although this digital gap is viewed as a development disadvantage, in the  context of election interference, it acts as a buffer. But acknowledging this reality  doesn’t diminish the presence of election interference, especially when we avoid the urge  to lump all African states under one umbrella. Not every country on the continent is equally “offline”. South Africa, with its comparatively advanced digital and democratic systems, stands out and, unsurprisingly, draws a different kind of attention. Since 2015, other countries have identified special cases of digital election interference stretching from Nigeria and Kenya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Angola and Zimbabwe.  

In Nigeria and Kenya, investigations have uncovered that Cambridge  Analytica, the infamous data-crunching firm, played a shadowy role in manipulating  elections in 2015 and 2017. Channel 4 News exposé, titled “Data,  Democracy and Dirty Tricks”, shows how the company orchestrated campaigns aimed at discrediting opposition figures with fake news and inflammatory attack ads during already tense and contested elections. Their findings suggest that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t just consulting, it was scripting the chaos. 

Ahead of Angola’s 2022 election, social media became a minefield of bots and trolls. Researchers found coordinated smear campaigns using fake accounts and viral hashtags to discredit the opposition party, Unita. Of course, social media influencers have also been enlisted to push certain narratives, because who better to shape public opinion than someone who has a huge following. 

In other cases, African states embraced biometric registration and digital results transmission. The only catch? They often forgot to bring cybersecurity along for the ride. In Kenya’s 2017 presidential election, the supreme court annulled  the results after identifying significant failures in the electronic transmission of results and acknowledging attempts to hack the electoral commission’s servers. Similarly,  during Nigeria’s February 2023 general election, the Independent National Electoral  Commission faced repeated crashes of its real-time results viewing portal, with the minister of communications later confirming nearly 13 million  cyberattack attempts targeting election infrastructure in the lead-up to and during the  vote.

On the other hand, countries such as the DRC and Senegal are accused of violating basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly by resorting to internet shutdowns. These blackouts are used to suppress dissent and restrict information. But they cut citizens off from critical, sometimes even lifesaving information, conveniently timed before or during elections. Other evidence of this occurred in Uganda (2021),  Ethiopia (2020) and Zimbabwe (2019), where all internet access was shut down during election periods. This authoritarian tool, ironically enough, is often framed as  a noble effort to protect elections from digital interference, as if silencing an entire population is the surest way to preserve democracy. It’s a curious logic that suggests that it is better to “safeguard” democracy by suppressing it. 

Zimbabwe’s August 2023 general elections were marred by accusations against the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, including premature  announcement of results and allegations of voter suppression and irregularities. During South Africa’s national and provincial elections in May 2024, the electoral commission had to deal with technical glitches that sparked public worry. This  included a brief outage of the election results dashboard at the Results Operating Centre in Midrand, as well as power outages during the vote counting process. Both  countries encountered issues that undermined public trust in their electoral bodies.  Notably, digital interference was not a major focus of concern in either case;  apparently, it takes more than a few server crashes and power outages to steal an  election.  

It is fair to say that technologically advanced states do face greater vulnerability because of their reliance on digital infrastructure and widespread internet access. But Africa is not immune to election meddling; rather, its exposure to digital interference is currently less pronounced. This should not breed complacency. Instead, African nations must strengthen their electoral systems to avoid the pitfalls that  have already compromised democracies elsewhere.

Thuto Khumalo and Mihle Kambula are international relations students at the University of Johannesburg.