Elections
Youth leaders and peace actors have raised concerns over the increasing vulnerability of young people to political manipulation, warning that rising political temperatures ahead of the 2027 General Election could fuel violence if preventive measures are not strengthened.
Speaking during a Youth Civic Engagement Forum and Festival in Kisumu on Friday, July 24, 2026, Youth Arts Development and Entrepreneurship Network (YADN) East Africa Director Sammy Gathii said young people often become the face of political violence despite not being the architects of the conflict.
He said the forum was aimed at giving young people a platform to speak for themselves and to commit to promoting peaceful political participation, rather than being used to advance politicians’ interests.
“We want young people to disassociate themselves from violence and instead become active champions of peace, cohesion and responsible civic engagement,” said Gathii.
Stakeholders have called for greater political participation and representation of young women, saying Nigeria’s democracy cannot thrive if half of its population remains largely excluded from decision-making positions.
The stakeholders spoke in Abuja at the graduation ceremony of participants in the Voices of Change Fellowship Programme organised by the NAF Foundation for Young Women.
The event, which coincided with the June 12 Democracy Day celebrations, focused on dismantling structural barriers that hold women back from decision-making tables in Nigeria.
Chikas Kumle, a two-time political aspirant in Plateau state and executive director of the Women Development Monitoring Initiative (WDMI), expressed concern over the zero representation of women under the age of 35 in the national assembly.
A coalition of women-focused civil society organisations (CSOs) says more needs to be done to reverse the decline in female political participation in Nigeria.
The groups noted that only three women emerged as senatorial candidates in the party primaries, representing 2.7 percent of the senate’s 109 seats if elected in 2027.
In a statement jointly signed by Voice of Women Empowerment Foundation (VOWEF), Women in Politics Forum (WIPF), EneObi Centre for Development (ECD), and Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI), the coalition asked President Bola Tinubu to influence passage of the Special Seats Bill to guarantee inclusion.
A post-primary audit of political parties ahead of the 2027 general elections has found that loopholes in the Electoral Act, costly nomination forms, consensus arrangements and money politics are limiting women’s participation and chances of emerging as candidates.
Gender rights advocates and electoral experts disclosed on Wednesday during a media briefing held via X Space, where they presented findings from an audit of internal party elections.
Cynthia Mbamalu, a gender and human rights advocate, said the Electoral Act 2026, which limits party primaries to direct and consensus modes, failed to provide clear guidelines for direct primaries.
Ms Mbamalu said Section 86 of the Act left the design of guidelines to political parties, creating wide discretion that weakened transparency.
“Ordinarily, direct primaries should have been a saving grace for marginalised groups, especially women, but the way parties implemented them closed the space,” she said.
It’s a familiar pattern in the campaign for gender inclusion in Nigerian politics: a major reform proposal gathers momentum, draws public support, and then quietly stalls.
Every few years, as the nation approaches a major election, hope rises for the campaign. Speeches and promises are made, and bills are drafted.
However, as the electoral clock begins its final, frantic countdown, that hope is systematically strangled by procedural delays, silences, and “indefinite postponement.” It is, in many ways, beginning to feel like déjà vu.
At the centre of this latest episode is the Reserved Seats for Women Bill, sponsored by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, alongside 12 other members of the House.
The proposal is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to correct Nigeria’s persistent gender imbalance in elective offices.
10 women MPs, five on behalf of the Labour Party and five on behalf of the Nationalist Party, have been elected in the 2026 general election.
Alicia Bugeja Said, Rosianne Cutajar, Miriam Dalli, Julia Farrugia and Alison Zerafa Civelli have been elected for the Labour Party.
Janice Abela Chetcuti, Eve Borg Bonello, Rebekah Borg, Graziella Galea and Paula Mifsud Bonnici have been elected for the PN.
Miriam Dalli and Rebekah Borg were elected in two districts, Dalli on the 5th and 11th and Borg in the 7th and 11th. Abela Chetcuti was elected through the proportionality mechanism system.
Progress toward gender parity in politics slowed in 2024 — a quiet shift after a streak of record-breaking years for women’s political candidacies. While Kamala Harris makes history this year as the first woman of color atop a presidential ticket, some political organizers are hoping her candidacy will pull more women back into power.
After 2018 was dubbed a second “year of the woman,” — the first being in 1992 — marking a record number of women running for the highest offices in the country, women continued to reach new highs in the subsequent elections: 583 women ran for the House in 2020 and 2022, and 70 women ran for the Senate in 2022, according to data from Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.
In 2024, those numbers dropped back down to 466 for the House and 52 for the Senate, a conspicuous decline after years of steady growth.
“Progress for women in politics appears to be slowing, if not stalling,” RepresentWomen warned in its 2024 Gender Parity Index last month, noting that women are still significantly underrepresented at all levels of U.S. government.
Read here the full article published by Politico on 23 August 2024.
Image by Politico
What’s the context?
Mid-way through a bumper election year, there are few gains for women in power
¨Gender equality pledges fall short in some countries
¨Women make up slightly more than a quarter of parliaments worldwide on average
¨Experts say underrepresentation creates democratic deficit
BRUSSELS - Billed as “democracy's biggest test,” 2024 is a major election year with billions of citizens casting their votes. But commitments to gender equality in politics are falling short in some parts of the world.
While there have been historic moments, such as the election of Mexico's first female president Claudia Sheinbaum in June and Kamala Harris' bid to become the first female president of the United States, elections in Indonesia, India, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and South Africa had no female frontrunners.
The picture isn't much better in houses of parliament around the world. The percentage of women in legislatures globally stood at 26.9% on average on June 1, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an independent organisation promoting democracy.
At the current rate, it will take 130 years before gender equality is reached in the highest positions of power, according to the United Nations.
Read here the full article published by Context on 21 August 2024.
Image by Context
The number of women running for the House and Senate has dropped, including a record number of incumbent women not running for reelection.
Women continue to make record-breaking progress in politics — most notably with Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the first woman of color at the top of a major party presidential ticket. However, an annual report by RepresentWomen, a nonprofit organization that supports institutional reforms to help women enter public office, found that progress has been inconsistent.
The report, called the Gender Parity Index, tracks gender representation across local, state and federal offices.
“The 2024 Index reflects our complex political landscape, suggesting progress in women’s political representation may stagnate or even backslide,” according to the report.
Overall, the United States lags behind most established democracies. Women are still underrepresented at every level of government, holding under one-third of all elected positions despite accounting for more than 50 percent of the total national population. In the last year, the number of women congressional candidates has fallen by 20 percent in the House and 26 percent in the Senate. And a record number of incumbent women are not running for reelection.
Read here the full article published by 19th News on 12 August 2024.
Image by 19th News
What you need to know:
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There’s a growing consensus among academicians that these quotas “work”.
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However, there is a conundrum as women who are elected in countries with gender quotas are often criticised as being less qualified.
Standing in the scorching afternoon heat, Aminata Bilkisu Kanu took off her sunglasses to wipe away the beads of sweat trickling down her face as she appealed to the crowd of mostly male voters.
“Think ‘women’ when voting in the June 24 elections,” she told them.
“We keep your resources within; the men take them away.”
The 24-year-old single mother was the first woman to run for the national parliament from Mamoi village, part of the Masimera Chiefdom in Port Loko District, located in the conservative north of the country.
Patriarchal culture runs deep in Sierra Leone, but it is even stronger in the north and parts of the east, where customs do not allow for women to become a paramount chief, the traditional name for the district leader.
Read here the full article published by The Nation on 11 August 2024.
Image credits: The Nation
With voters heading to the polls in countries around the world, 2024 has been dubbed the year of elections. While a recent change in the United States election will put a woman at the top of a major party ticket, a June presidential election just over the border in Mexico stood out. Earlier this summer, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was elected president of Mexico, shattering the political glass ceiling in North America. In second place came Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, another woman. Sheinbaum–in addition to perhaps being born a leader (and having a Nobel-prize winning brain)–and Gálvez are the product of an enabling environment–otherwise, how to explain the rise in women’s political leadership only in the second half of the 20th century? The first woman ever to be elected to the highest office (in this case, the office of prime minister) occurred in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1960.
This blog, part of CGD’s work on women’s leadership, focuses on political leaders and explores which conditions enable women’s leadership by contrasting Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region that is ahead of most in women’s presence in politics, with Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that is currently some steps behind. The 42 countries in LAC have had a total of 26 women heads of state, presidents, or prime ministers (PMs), with seven incumbent women heads of government (including Sheinbaum who will assume office on October 1, 2024). The 48 countries in SSA have had a total of 16 women heads of state, presidents, or PMs, with four incumbent ones.[1] Women currently hold 36 percent of parliamentary seats in LAC and 27 percent in SSA. Countries in LAC also have a higher share of women cabinet ministers.
Read here the full article published by the Center for Global Development on 09 August 2024.
Image by Center for Global Development
Shirley Chisholm, a Democratic congresswoman, was the first African American woman to run for president of the United States. Sixty years later, Kamala Harris will become the first Black and South Asian American woman to be nominated for president by a major party. Is the United States poised to elect her?
Chisholm, from Brooklyn, N.Y., first ran for office in 1964 — the year both Harris and I were born (the vice president on Oct. 20 and me on Oct. 30). When Chisholm began her presidential campaign in 1972, Harris and I were probably more focused on our toys and our friends, but I was fascinated by politics and aware of Congresswoman Chisholm.
For Black women of my generation, Black women political leaders were few and far between in the 1960s and ’70s, and the numbers remain below our percentage of the population.
Black women represent 7.7 per cent of the total U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census. The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) reports that 5.4 per cent of all voting members of Congress identify as Black women. Nonetheless, the situation has improved greatly compared to 1968, when Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress.
Read here the full article published by The Conversation on 24 July 2024.
Image by The Conversation