Electoral integrity is about more than what happens at the ballot box. It is also about who has access to money, who controls technology, who shapes the information citizens receive, and whether people have the civic space to participate freely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Traditional threats to electoral integrity have not disappeared; election results are still being manipulated in specific contexts. However, new pressures are finding new ways to shape what voters see, believe and ultimately decide<\/strong> \u2014 from the information they consume to the money behind political influence, noted Richard Klein of the National Democratic Institute (NDI). That\u2019s why we need to look beyond election day to the broader electoral environment, as Samuel Atuobi of the African Union Commission put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And these forces do not operate in isolation. As James Lahai of AfEONet\/WAEON explained, \u201cMoney buys the technology, technology facilitates money transactions, and money helps erode the civic space that would otherwise expose the money.\u201d When money can buy influence and technology can multiply it, a bigger question emerges: how can we protect elections from these forces?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the third Electoral Integrity Summit<\/strong>, held in Accra on 23\u201324 September 2026, participants from across Africa, brought together by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana)<\/a> and the African Election Observation Network (AfEONet)<\/a> as part of the EU co-funded AHEAD Africa project, came together to grapple with this question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n