Introducing Elections and Electoral Violence in Africa

Elections can be very strong tool for national transformation on one hand. It can also influence national stagnation and retardation, when men and women who promotes resource mismanagement are brought to power. The chapter presents the colonial foundation of elections in Africa and how the imperial colonial governments across Africa, formed alliance with the African elite in some parts of the continent, to institutionalize western democratic practices as against the forms of traditional democracies practiced by many African communities. The chapter revealed that overtime, since independence, majority of the African states began to experience different degrees of electoral violence that undermined their nation building processes.