The Role of Lawyers in Defending Electoral Justice in Africa

In an environment marked by increasing threats to democracy and the rule of law, lawyers and bar associations are being called upon to reconsider and strengthen their role in safeguarding democratic institutions. 

Across Africa, elections are shaped by dense layers of constitutional rules, electoral laws, regulations, and court precedents. In many jurisdictions, political actors now approach elections with parallel legal strategies, recognising that electoral outcomes may ultimately be shaped not only at the ballot box but also in the courtroom. Electoral integrity may be undermined by legal ambiguities, unlawful restrictions on candidates or political parties, online disinformation, illicit campaign financing, administrative failures, or corrupt practices during vote counting and tabulation. 

The growing digitisation of elections has further complicated this landscape. 

Lawyers increasingly confront disputes involving electronic transmission of results, admissibility of digital evidence, cybersecurity breaches, manipulated audiovisual content, and coordinated online disinformation campaigns. Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes and synthetic media, pose new challenges for electoral justice systems across the continent.

Guardians of electoral justice

In this context, lawyers serve not only as interpreters of the law but also as guardians of electoral justice, ensuring that democratic processes remain transparent, inclusive, and accountable. They play this role despite potential reprisals and threats. 

African lawyers already play several core roles in this environment.

• Advising candidates, parties and voters whose rights to vote or stand have been restricted or violated.

• Litigating to challenge gerrymandered boundaries, unlawful disqualifications, electoral violence, women’s quota or opaque campaign finance systems.

• Acting as party agents, observers, or legal auditors during registration, polling, or electronic results transmission and tabulation of results.

• Supporting electoral commissions and courts through expert input on legal reforms, regulations and dispute resolution procedures.

• Working within governments to provide legal guidance on actions or decisions that may impact free and fair elections (positively or negatively). 

In several African countries, lawyers have also become increasingly involved in combating gender-based political violence, defending the political participation rights of women and marginalized groups, and challenging discriminatory nomination practices that undermine inclusive democratic participation.

In South Africa, for example, lawyers have represented civil society groups in challenges to electoral rules that disadvantaged marginalised communities, helping expand meaningful participation in democratic processes. 

In Kenya, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has cooperated with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on legal education, training, and reforms around elections, and both institutions publicly recognise that neither can deliver credible polls without the other.

Bar Associations as Guardians and Educators

Bar associations in Africa are not just membership clubs; they are regulatory bodies that can protect the rule of law by enforcing professional ethics, investing in legal education, supporting strategic litigation to protect fundamental rights, and conducting public outreach on electoral justice. 

Many lawyers engage in these efforts despite sometimes being subject to reprisals, disinformation, and harassment. 

Ahead of recent electoral cycles, African bar associations and chief justices have started to speak more openly about the risks of abusive electoral litigation and politicised attacks on judges. Ahead of Ghana’s 2024 elections, the Ghana Bar Association publicly condemned the politicization of the judiciary and warned against escalating attacks on judicial institutions. In Kenya, LSK issued reminders before the 2022 elections urging advocates to avoid frivolous petitions and personal attacks on judges, and later publicly condemned lawyers who used inflammatory language or baseless allegations in presidential election petitions. 

The Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) of Tanzania Mainland contributed to advocacy for reforms on the Electoral Act on election litigation ahead of the 2025 elections, published a Training Manual on Elections and conducted seminars for legal practitioners on election dispute litigation. 

In South Sudan, the Bar Association recently unveiled a new five-year strategic plan focused on access to justice and protection of the constitutional order and has publicly emphasized the role lawyers can play in electoral justice.    

The Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU) has supported strategic litigation around fundamental electoral rights at the regional level, helping refine regional principles for free and fair elections. 

Bar associations can also contribute to electoral integrity through legal education and civic outreach. In preparation for the 2027 elections in Kenya, the chair of LSK outlined plans to conduct nationwide civic education in September and October covering key topics to be agreed upon with the IEBC. In previous cycles, the LSK and the Commission have jointly conducted training for lawyers on election disputes. 

In 2023, the American Bar Association (ABA) in the United States established a task force on American Democracy focused on instilling trust in the election system and educating the public about elections and civics, including via the legal profession:  

“The ABA believes our legal profession is uniquely positioned to denounce and prevent anti-democratic practices which seek to influence or overturn election results, and to encourage the civic engagement and civil discourse vital to the protection of democracy.”

African bar associations could adopt similar approaches by institutionalizing continuous legal education on election law, digital evidence, cyber-enabled electoral manipulation, and ethical responsibilities in politically sensitive litigation. 

These educational initiatives are particularly important given the rapidly evolving nature of electoral law, including challenges posed by digital technologies, online disinformation, and cyber-related threats. 

Beyond courtroom advocacy, lawyers increasingly shape public trust in elections through their public communication, legal interpretations, and conduct during politically sensitive proceedings. In highly polarized electoral environments, irresponsible legal rhetoric, public attacks on judges, or unsubstantiated allegations can inflame tensions and undermine confidence in democratic institutions.

When lawyers undermine electoral justice

The same skills that allow lawyers to defend democratic rights can also be turned against the system. Across African jurisdictions, judges have raised concerns around repetitive filings, weak or fabricated evidence, aggressive recusal motions, and strategic delays designed to keep disputes alive in the media long after the votes are counted.

Examples from Kenya, Nigeria, and Brazil illustrate the pattern. 

In Kenya’s 2022 presidential petitions, the Supreme Court singled out affidavits based on hearsay and forgeries, warning counsel about ethical breaches and reminding them of possible contempt sanctions. In Nigeria, bar leaders and the Chief Justice have criticised frivolous suits and forum shopping around party disputes as a direct threat to democratic stability ahead of 2027. 

Globally, courts have gone further to sanction abusive electoral litigation. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court fined Jair Bolsonaro’s party roughly 22.9 million reais for a baseless challenge to electronic voting machines, describing the litigation as being brought in “bad faith” and based on a “completely fraudulent narrative of the facts.”

These cases point to a structural risk: where tight electoral timelines and high political stakes create strong incentives for abusive legal tactics. The challenge for bar associations and courts lies in balancing accountability with the need to preserve access to justice and legitimate electoral complaints. Judges may hesitate to impose sanctions in politically sensitive cases for fear of appearing partisan. Nevertheless, accountability mechanisms remain essential to deter abusive conduct and preserve confidence in judicial institutions. 

While it is important to take action against malicious complaints, such measures cannot deter political participation and the use of the electoral justice system.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is an underused safety valve.

Mediation and conciliation mechanisms can resolve intra-party and inter-party disputes before they escalate into full-blown litigation, but interviews in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria suggest some lawyers resist ADR because prolonged court battles are more lucrative. This reluctance keeps pressure on courts and can deepen polarisation at precisely the moment when de-escalation is needed. 

In several African countries, EMB-led mediation frameworks and informal political dialogue mechanisms have helped reduce tensions around party primaries and candidate nominations. Strengthening these systems through clearer legal backing and greater professional recognition for mediators could reduce unnecessary litigation and preserve judicial resources for genuinely contentious disputes.

Building an African agenda for ethical election lawyering

For African legal communities, the question is less whether lawyers matter in elections and more how to align normal business incentives in the legal sector with democratic integrity. Several concrete steps flow from the jurisprudence and recent practice across the continent.

• Expand pro bono and targeted support: Women candidates and marginalised communities in Africa often face online harassment, gender-based violence, discriminatory nomination practices, and higher procedural hurdles when seeking redress. Structured pro bono schemes, fee caps for certain electoral matters, or donor-supported legal aid can help close the “electoral justice gap” for these groups.

• Invest in continuous training and cross-sector alliances: Electoral law is now inseparable from technology, disinformation and cyber-related threats. African bars could adapt models like the American Bar Association’s election law resources and democracy task force to their own contexts, developing ongoing training, case databases, and joint programmes with electoral commissions, civil society and academia. There is also a growing need for collaborative innovation between legal institutions, electoral commissions, civil society organizations, and technology actors. Across parts of Africa, emerging initiatives such as election petition monitoring platforms, like the KDI EPT dashboard, open electoral justice databases, and citizen-facing tribunal dashboards are helping improve transparency, public understanding, and access to electoral justice information.

• Normalise ADR for certain types of political disputes: EMBs, courts and bar associations should jointly design ADR frameworks that are credible to parties and the public, with clear rules on confidentiality, enforceability and timelines. If lawyers are trained and rewarded for effective mediation—not only for courtroom wins—ADR can reduce caseloads and lower the temperature around high-stakes races.

• Tighten ethical guidance and sanctions in electoral cases: Bar associations should issue specific guidance on election-related conduct, including evidentiary standards, contempt thresholds, and consequences for frivolous litigation or public attacks on judges. Disciplinary bodies must be willing to act—even in politically sensitive cases—while courts should clearly record reasons when dismissing abusive complaints, so that sanctions do not chill legitimate challenges.

For Africa’s legal community, there is a choice: accept a narrow, partisan role in election contests, or embrace a wider professional duty to protect fundamental political rights and ultimately the integrity of the vote. 

As electoral disputes increasingly shape political transitions across Africa, the ethical conduct of lawyers and bar associations will become as important to democratic legitimacy as the elections themselves. Judicial independence, professional accountability, civic trust, and electoral integrity are now deeply interconnected. 

The lawyers and bar associations that take the second path (as many in Africa are already doing) will not only strengthen democracy in their own countries – they will help set the standard for electoral justice across the continent and beyond. 

Katherine Ellena and Typhaine Roblot are among the co-founders of  Partnerships for Integrity, an international non-profit organization rethinking how democracy is done so citizens have real agency to shape and reshape their democratic arrangements.

Femi Adebayo and Bukola Idowu are public policy experts with Kimpact Development Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that advances good governance, democratic rights, public policy, and public engagement

Justice Makaramba is a retired Judge of the High Court of Tanzania and member of the Tanganyika Law Society of Tanzania. Esther Muigain Mnaro is a Kenyan advocate and Program Manager, Office of the CEO for The Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), the premier continental forum of and for lawyers and lawyers’ associations in Africa.