Elections remain the only viable way in which people in Africa can peacefully and democratically choose, change and hold to account their political leaders. If only it were that simple … over recent years the quality of elections has been slowly and systematically degraded to a point where the question being asked is whether Africa’s elections are now effectively choiceless? Elections have to be free, fair and credible to give birth to legitimate leaders and to contribute to the growth and building of democratic, peaceful, just and developmental societies. Elections must meet minimum African Union (AU) objectives and conditions, as set out in the AU Constitutive Act which stipulates its objectives and values to “promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance”. The AU principles governing democratic elections in Africa stipulate unequivocally that “democratic elections are the basis of the authority of any representative government”. Reflecting this, the constitutions of most African states also provide for free and fair elections and there has undoubtedly been progress in crafting the legislative and constitutional framework for leadership renewal through free and fair elections. The practices are, however, far from satisfactory and generally do not comply with the standards and norms agreed upon. The mentality and practice of many leaders in Africa have been to regard power as an end in itself and therefore something to be attained or retained by any means and at any cost. With this approach, the quality of elections has been slowly and systematically degraded to a point where the legitimate question is being asked as to whether Africa’s elections are now choiceless. Many African elections have been marred by violence and bloodshed, displacements, forced disappearances, blatant fraud. This leads to illegitimate outcomes that have created instability, lack of cohesion and conflict. Compromised electoral management bodies and captured legal systems often conspire to give aggrieved contestants no chance in either elections or courts of law. As we have identified in previous articles in this series, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened an already dire situation and is being used to close civic and democratic space and in some instances as a pretext to suspend elections and electoral activity. The result has been that COVID-19 has produced more political outcomes than public health ones, putting Africa on a definitive path of democratic regression and authoritarian resurgence or consolidation. Sham elections continue to poison democracy across Africa, resulting in public loss of confidence and voter apathy. This was recently witnessed in Uganda where voter turnout dropped by 10% from the 2016 elections, with only 57% of the almost 18 million registered voters turning out to vote. Tanzania went to the polls in October 2020 with one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country’s democratic history. About 15 million out of 29 million registered voters cast their votes. With 12 nationa