Electoral Governance Report: January–June 2026 in Review

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) 28 July session on the AU Commission Chairperson's bi-annual electoral report — covering January to June 2026 and presenting the electoral calendar for the second half of the year — takes place in a continental electoral governance environment whose aggregate quality has declined relative to the standards that the AU's own normative framework establishes.

The six electoral processes covered in the January–June 2026 period — Benin, Uganda, Congo, Djibouti, Cape Verde, Guinea, and Ethiopia — span the full spectrum of electoral quality from genuine competitive processes to constitutional formalities that validate predetermined outcomes.

Uganda — the current PSC Chair — conducted its presidential and parliamentary elections in January 2026 in a context marked by documented restrictions on opposition campaigning, limitations on independent civil society election observation, and the political pressures associated with Yoweri Museveni's multi-decade incumbency. The electoral environment's quality is directly relevant to Uganda's credibility as PSC Chair in a month that includes a session on unconstitutional changes of government and a report on electoral governance. The optics of a PSC Chair whose own recent electoral process was associated with documented governance concerns presenting an electoral governance agenda require acknowledgment rather than circumvention.

Ethiopia's electoral environment remains shaped by the political and security consequences of the Tigray conflict and its aftermath, with the restoration of governance authority across previously contested territory creating both opportunity and risk for electoral processes whose inclusivity and credibility will determine whether they advance or complicate the country's fragile stabilisation trajectory.

The broader continental electoral outlook for the second half of 2026 — the forward-looking dimension of the 28 July session — will be presented against a continental background in which constitutional manipulation, term limit modification, and the use of electoral management body appointments to influence outcomes have become documented features of the governance environment in multiple AU member states.

ASA's assessment is that the 28 July session's analytical value depends on whether the AU Commission's report engages with the governance quality dimensions of the electoral processes reviewed — not only their technical administration but their political competitiveness, the independence of electoral management bodies, the conditions for opposition participation, and the compliance of electoral frameworks with continental normative standards — or whether it limits itself to a descriptive calendar account that avoids the substantive governance assessments that the PSC's electoral oversight mandate requires.

The session should also explicitly address the forward electoral calendar in light of the Unconstitutional Change of Government (UCG) discussion from earlier in the month. Electoral processes that are conducted in conditions of inadequate competitiveness, opposition restriction, or governance institution manipulation create the legitimacy deficits that have historically preceded the popular support — or at minimum, popular tolerance — for military transitions. The link between electoral governance quality and UCG risk is not theoretical. It is documented across the continent's recent history, and the PSC's electoral report and its UCG normative framework should be presented and assessed in explicit dialogue with each other.