What happens when elections become rituals and power refuses to leave the room?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Prof. Nic Cheeseman, one of the world's leading scholars on African democracy, based at the University of Birmingham and the mind behind Democracy in Africa.
Cheeseman brings three decades of research across the continent to a conversation that cuts through the noise of election cycles, youth frustration, and geopolitical manoeuvring. The discussion moves from why authoritarian leaders still hold elections they intend to rig, to the mechanics of political legitimacy that no amount of money can buy at the ballot box.
They examine the growing crisis in the Horn of Africa, where Sudan's conflict has displaced fourteen million people while the international community looks elsewhere. From managed instability in Ethiopia to the erosion of democratic norms in Tanzania and Uganda, the conversation interrogates why some conflicts persist not despite global attention but because of its absence.
At the heart of the episode is an uncomfortable truth. Democracy across much of Africa has not failed because it was tried and found wanting, but because it was captured, manipulated, and never genuinely delivered. Africa's frustrated youth are not rejecting democratic values, they are rejecting systems that promised representation and delivered extraction.
The conversation closes with a note of cautious optimism. From Uganda, Gambia, Zambia to Nigeria, citizens have stood together in numbers that made manipulation futile. The question is whether political elites will meet that energy with reform or repression.
A sharp, nuanced conversation about power, legitimacy, and who really benefits when the ballots are counted.
Lagos to Lamu. Cape Town to Cairo. This is Panel 54, a global perspective through an African lens.
📩 Contact: hello@panel54pod.com
🎙 Recorded in Nairobi, Kenya
🎧 Produced by Commex Africa and E & C Talent
