Public Policy and Administration Research www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-5731(Paper) ISSN 2225-0972(Online) DOI: 10.7176/PPAR Vol.9, No.7, 2019 1 Electoral Management in Africa: A Facade or Reality-The Case of Election Dispute Resolution Mechanism Joseph Kwaku Asamoah Director of Training Centre at the Electoral Commission of Ghana, and a Facilitator at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping and Training Centre in Ghana. P O Box GP 19385, Accra. Ghana Abstract The restive citizens of most Africa countries continue to demand free and fair elections as the only democratic tool that equates the fundamental human rights. Even in some post conflict countries, the general public have adopted elections as a means of demanding accountability, good governance and independent and impartial election management bodies. Whereas elections have become commonplace in Africa over the past decades, some recent elections have failed to legitimise power by creating tension and causing violence. Understanding the dynamics around electoral violence has become fundamental to limiting the risk of electoral violence to improve the quality of democracy in Africa. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to examine how EMBs and the judicial system can prevent electoral violence, followed by an assessment of the role stakeholders and effective electoral cycle management play in preventing election related disputes. The study uses uses the politico-legal debates to support the argument of causes of electoral violence on the African continent and ways to prevent them. The study suggests that an independent and impartial EMBs and judiciary are prerequisites for effective election dispute resolution mechanisms. The again concludes that the multi-stakeholder conflict management, which brings together various types of actors and supports social diversity, is fundamental to promoting peaceful electoral processes in Africa. Keywords: electoral violence, election management bodies, stakeholder management, election dispute resolution DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-7-01 Publication date:July 31 st 2019 1. Introduction Since the early 1990s, elections have become an important democratic imperative in almost all African states and are now a mandatory tool for accessing or retaining a political power. Recent global democratic trend reflects the view that, in Africa and beyond, citizens value elections. Elections have contributed to the emergence of democratic governments in Ghana, Benin, Cape Verde, Senegal, and South Africa. Some Africa countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone that were engaged in civil war and protracted conflict have even come out to hold credible elections. There has been legitimate power alternation between incumbent governments and opposition parties in some African countries since the adoption of multi-party democracy. For example, Ghana’s 2016 and the Liberian 2018 presidential elections which were notably competitive, the ruling parties handed power over to the opposition parties, reaffirming the entrenchment of democracy in Africa. The universal acceptance of elections in Africa is as a result of the growing expectations of citizens to demand accountable governance. Indeed, democracy has seen growth in many African societies. According International Foundation for Electoral Systems (2014), 29 out of the 54 countries on the Africa continent held elections in 2015. However, the fact that electoral processes have now become commonplace does not imply political stability in Africa, particularly in countries that lack the necessary political and technical infrastructure to deal or prevent election- related violence. In some cases, elections have been manipulated to legitimate autocratic regimes or to ensure dynastic successions on the continent (International Peace Institute, 2011). A study by Bekoe (2010) indicates that violence affects about 20 to 25 percent of elections in Africa. Elections in Africa have become periods of despair and anxiety for contesting candidates as well as the general citizenry whose efforts to seek new leadership for their respective countries often prove abortive (Vorobyev, 2010). Authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Togo, Zimbabwe and recently in Benin have been able to exploit the symbol of elections by abusing them through fraud and skewed procedures. Over the past decade, electoral processes have become triggers of violence in several African countries: The Democratic Republic of Congo (2006 and 2018), Togo (2005), Nigeria (2007), Lesotho (2007), Guinea-Bissau (2008), and Senegal (2012). In Kenya, flawed elections conducted in 2007 left a trail of disaster which manifested itself through ethnic clashes, leading to the death of over 1000 people. Likewise, the 2008 elections in Zimbabwe took violent dimension when political leaders anticipated defeat (Masunungure, 2009). Electoral violence that characterised these elections led to loss of many lives and human displacement. In each of these cases, election lost its democratic value and failed to confer legitimacy on the political authority. Tensions over land rights, employment and ethnic marginalization, religion and access to national resources and wealth are the dominant characteristics of recurring electoral violence (Bekoe, 2010). Such is the case in