GEAB 173

We are not going to draw up a calendar of all the elections, but of those which seem to us to be the most significant. In 2023, for example, ten African states will hold national elections: Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Liberia, Libya (if they are not postponed again), Madagascar, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan and Zimbabwe (i.e. 1/3 of the African population). In 2024 there will be 19 other African countries.[1] In Europe, eight member states (i.e. 1/4 of the EU population) are organising national elections. They will serve as a thermometer to measure the strengthening of the populist and extreme right-wing tendencies in Europe, which are part of the 2022 dynamics in Hungary, France, Italy, Sweden and Denmark.

Overall, 2023 began with a few revealing elections in terms of leadership, but which are part of the political continuity: the Czech Republic with the elected president Petr Pavel, former chairman of the NATO military committee (13-14 January & 27-28 January), Nigeria (25 February) with the election in the first round of Bola Tinubu, leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in power since 2015,[2] in Estonia (5 March), strengthening of the governmental majority of the outgoing pro-Ukrainian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, and on 10 March the election by the Parliament of Xi Jinping for a 3rd term, which is certainly unprecedented but expected.[3]