And the election winner is … the candidate who can afford Africa’s soaring nomination fees

Alexis Mohamed would have loved to stand against his former boss. A longtime adviser to Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, Mohamed resigned last September, citing democratic regression in the country.But at the election at the weekend, Mohamed was not on the ballot. Now outside the country, he says he cannot return home to file nomination papers or campaign freely without credible security guarantees. Even if he were allowed to compete, nomination costs would still loom as a steep barrier in a political environment many critics describe as ceremonial, with Guelleh the habitual winner.Djibouti and Benin held presidential elections at the weekend, joining the 18 or so African nations going to the polls in 2026. The two French-speaking countries share one striking feature: high nomination fees that have attracted widespread protest. Djibouti’s fee was set at about the equivalent of £20,000 while Benin has pegged it at about £328,000.Election billboards in Cotonou, Benin, 6 April. Photograph: Olympia de Maismont/AFP/Getty Images“On paper, this may appear to be a simple legal requirement. In reality, it is an additional mechanism of selection and exclusion,” says Mohamed, describing participation in the election as a waste of time and money. In Djibouti, the nomination fee is refundable only to candidates who obtain at least 10% of votes cast.Mohamed adds: “In a country where the incumbent president is presented, election after election, as winning with figures close to 97%, the real meaning of such a provision is not merely to regulate competition but to lock it down.”Alexis Mohamed longtime adviser to Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar Guelleh. Photograph: Courtesy of Alexis MohamedGuelleh, 78, has ruled since 1999 and has pushed through constitutional changes widely seen as tailored to his advantage, first enabling open tenure and later removing the presidential age limit, previously capped at 75.This pattern is increasingly visible across Africa, where nomination fees and the wider costs of campaigning are rising fast, reshaping who can run and what democracy looks like.The outcry over increased nomination fees is growing louder in Zimbabwe, where the fee in the last elections rose to £15,000, a 1,900% increase. Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Linda Tsungirirai Masarira, president of Labour Economists and Afrikan Democrats, says she could not participate in the 2023 polls due to “exorbitant fees”.Masarira says: “The notion that high nomination fees produce serious leadership is fundamentally flawed. Financial capacity is not a measure of political competence, integrity, public support or visionary leadership.”She does not entirely dismiss the need for fees, but says they must be reasonable, and warns that the current amount narrows the political field, making it harder for women and young people to participate, discourages independent and smaller party candidates, and consolidates power among already resourced political actors.Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Linda Tsungirirai Masarira, president of Labour Economists and Afrikan Democrats. Photograph: Courtesy of Linda MasariraMotlapele Raleru, executive director of the Botswana-based Centre for Democracy and Electoral Awareness, says rising fees do “more harm than good”. They may reduce the number of candidates, she says, but it does not improve the quality of choices left behind. Worse, it “reduces [candidacy] to a commercial transaction, not a civic right”.In practice, says Raleru, high fees become a “systematic wealth test” that privileges affluent political actors, shrinks voter choice and “puts democracy at stake”, effectively “on sale to the highest bidder”.Malawi offers a different kind of warning. There, the presidential nomination fee rose to about £4,200 for the September 2025 election, from about £800 five years earlier. The theory was simple: raise the price to attract only “serious” contenders. Yet the ballot expanded from seven candidates in the previous election to 17. Some candidates reportedly entered late and without a known political history.Malawian political science professor Nandini Patel does not rule out the possibility that powerful actors financed “proxies” to split votes and confuse opponents, meaning a high fee could still produce a crowded race but not necessarily a more credible one. She fears that an increase in nomination fees “may inspire corruption” and that the current “horrendous” fee level could block capable candidates.Election workers check names at a polling station in Blantyre, Malawi, 16 Sept 2025. Nomination fee rose to about £4,200 in the country last year. Photograph: Thoko Chikondi/APMilward Tobias, an independent presidential candidate in Malawi’s 2025 elections, rejects the idea that money measures seriousness. “Political competition is too heavy a sacrifice to be measured by nomination fee,” he says. In his view, some aspirants failed to run not because they lacked conviction, but because they were priced out.While Patel suspects collusion behind the bloated ballot, Tobias argues that it “was a protest statement”, driven by public frustration with the leadership style. He insists that leadership is driven by belief, not bank balance.Political scientist Michael Wahman, at the University of Michigan in the US, has researched the cost of elections in Malawi and Zambia. He points out that nomination fees are only a fragment of the massive costs candidates incur in many African elections. As in the US, where presidential campaign costs run into the billions, he says the sums involved make elections a dangerous breeding ground for corruption.