We vote at 18, but access to the presidency is negotiated at very different ages.
Originally published on Global Voices in English
Young people mobilized in Africa; Screenshot of YouTube channel DW Africa
At 18, a young man in West Africa chose his president. At the age of 25, he may sometimes sit in Parliament. To claim the highest court, he will have to wait 35, 40 or even 50 years depending on the country. In 2026, these thresholds begin to move, but the real locks are often found elsewhere.
Young people are considered mature enough to appoint their leaders, but not to claim to replace them. It is at the heart of political movements: voting, campaigning, campaigning, down the street. But when it comes to calling for the vote of its fellow citizens, it comes up against a closed door. Can we call inclusive a democracy that gives it the right to choose, but limits its ability to be chosen?
Age, a barrier with variable geometry
Everywhere, we vote at 18, but access to the presidency is negotiated at very different ages: 30 years in Gambia35 years in Senegal, Nigeria and Ivory Coast40 years in Benin, Ghana and Guinea. For the assemblies, the bar is lower: 25 years in Togo, Benin, Senegal and the Nigerian House of Representatives, 21 years in Ghana.
The Togolese case requires careful reading. The Constitution of 2024 the age of the President of the Republic, but he is now elected by Parliament and exercises only limited powers. The real power lies with the President of the Council, for whom 40 years are sufficient and who is not elected by presidential elections. Faure Gnassingbé has occupied it since 3 May 2025; Parliament elected the same day Jean-Lucien Savi de Tové, 86, President of the Republic, the oldest in the country ' s history to take up this function. Moreover, the legal age was not inviolable. In 2002, the Presidency threshold was reduced from 45 to 35 years, a reform which the opposition saw there as carved for Faure Gnassingbé..
The most recent case comes from Accra. On 30 July 2026, the Ghanaian government accepted to reduce the minimum age for running for office from 40 to 35 years, while the Constitutional Review Committee proposed 30 years. The text must go through a referendum requiring 40% participation and 75% votes in favour. The regional precedent remains that of Nigeria, where the law Not Too Young To Run lowered in 2018 the age of the Presidency from 40 to 35 and the age of the House of Representatives from 30 to 25, under pressure from a youth campaign.
Data compiled byInterparliamentary Union show that lowering the minimum age for running leads to younger parliaments. Côte d'Ivoire recalls behind the scenes in 2025 where outgoing President Alassane Ouattara, 83 years, was a candidate for a new term while the age limit of 75 was abolished in 2016. The law rarely protects rising generations.
Active youth, but especially in the streets
However, African youth are not heavily involved in all registers. According to Afrobarometer (August 2025, 39 countries), 18-35-year-olds are less present than their seniors in almost all traditional forms of participation, with 18 points behind the vote and a record twenty-nine points gap in Senegal. The protest is exceptional.
In Togo, Movement of 6 June, born of the arrest of rapper Aamron, brought thousands of people to the streets of Lomé in June 2025. The repression seven dead According to the Media Foundation for West Africa, FIDH called into question militiamen. In Madagascar, the September 2025 protest brought down the government and led to a military takeover. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) rotation that the overthrown president had himself come to power at 34 years of age, through a protest. In Kenya, the street removed part of the 2024 Finance Act; in Morocco, the mobilization at the end of 2025 led the authorities to announce incentives for youth applications, while continuing certain leaders. These movements without leaders get concessions but struggle to last without parties or unions to prolong them.
It is this passage from the challenge to power that ECOWAS has put on its agenda. First Regional Conference on Youth and Democracyheld in Dakar in September 2026 under the theme "from activism to the taking of power". Participants recalled that youth account for about 70 per cent of the region's population, according to the Final communiqué.
Between participation and representation: the glass ceiling
The 2025 reportInterparliamentary Union, published on April 9, 2026, notes that elected officials aged 30 or younger account for 2.8 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide, without progress since 2023, a first since 2014. More than one third of rooms (37.1%) have none.
In Ghana, IPU dataNo MP was 30 years of age or younger at the beginning of the 2025 legislature, and the 31-40 year olds occupy 46 seats out of 269, or 17.1%, while the law allows them to sit at the age of 21. In Senegal, the Assembly resulting from the laws of 2024 counts five elected under 30 years of age, or 3%, for an average age of 47, while nearly 38% of those enrolled are between 18 and 35 years of age. Bassirou Diomaye Faye, elected to 44 years, is the youngest president in the country's history, but his candidacy came after the hindrance of his mentor, Ousmane Sonko. In Nigeria, according International IDEAThe Chamber had three young people elected out of 360 in 2015 and fourteen in 2019: real progress, but modest. In Dakar, the leader of Yiaga Africa, the organisation behind the campaign, Executive summary the situation by saying that the political space is more open on paper than in fact.
Afrobarometer, however, reveals a paradox. If young people vote less than their elders, they are both kept away from places of power and away from the polls. The deficit of representation is not only suffered, it itself feeds disengagement. IPU warns that the absence of young people in assemblies undermines the legitimacy of institutions and confidence in democracy. Senegal, which the IPU report 2026 cites as one of the countries where the parliament has rejuvenated most after the last elections, nevertheless shows that a renewal is possible when a political project brings a generation.
A pact to reinvent: money, parties, locks
High threshold advocates invoke experience. In 34 countries, citizens interviewed by Afrobarometer want on average a minimum age of 39 to lead. Those who advocate for a lower level are relying on renewal and levers that the IPU considers to be proven, in particular the reduction of the age of eligibility, quotas and forums for young parliamentarians. But the Nigerian example shows that the main obstacle is financial.
For 2027, the ruling party, the APC, set 100 million nairas (approximately $75,000, according to Global Voices) the price of its presidential form, including 30 million declarations of interest and 70 million candidatures. The Senate costs $20 million and the House of Representatives 10. Young people get a half cut on the only "candidacy" share, leaving the presidential bill to 65 million. A citizen group calculated that an employee at the minimum wage, 70,000 nairas per month, should work over a century to offer some of these forms. The Electoral Law of 2026signed on 18 February, also doubled the ceiling for presidential campaign spending to 10 billion nairas, and tripled that of governors to 3 billion.
Meeting in Dakar from 8 to 10 September, at the initiative of ECOWAS and the Legis360 organization, delegates from 12 countries placed these obstacles first. Their Press release demands youth quotas, reduced application fees and spending ceilings, and launches a network of observers, WAYON. ECOWAS announced that it would deploy exclusively young observers for the Nigerian President, scheduled on 16 January 2027.
Other countries show that the law can act directly on investitures. Ecuador, quoted by the IPU, owes much of its progress to a 2022 law requiring 25 per cent of candidates to be young adults, and countries with limited mandates have significantly more young parliamentarians than the global average. The IPU already pointed out in 2023 lack of funding for youth and lack of spending ceilings as a cause of aging assemblies.
Elsewhere, the locks are political. In Benin, Romuald Wadagni won the presidential election on 12 April with 94.27% of votes, facing a single opponent, after theeviction the main opposition candidate; a constitutional review increased the terms of office to seven years and raised the threshold for obtaining seats in the Assembly of 10 to 20 per cent, a rule that weighs much more than a date of birth on a candidate without a device. In Burkina Faso, the dissolved all parties in January 2026. In The Gambia, President Barrow will see the president on 5 December running for a third term.
Inclusive on vote, incomplete on representation
Is a system that gives young people the right to choose their leaders but hinders their ability to become leaders fully inclusive? The findings say a lot, not just because of age. Thresholds are falling: Nigeria has made, Ghana is committed to it. But they are more a symptom than a cause, and lowering them without affecting the cost of the candidatures, the rules of the parties and the opening of the political game would amount to opening a door to an overly expensive staircase. What separates young people from decision-making places are costly and locked-in investitures, rejected candidatures and, sometimes, even the absence of parties.
As long as the street does not have credible institutional relays, it will rip off concessions or give way, as in Madagascar, to powers other than those it hoped for. The real task of the West African Democratic Pact is to make youth not only the promised future of politics, but also a present and effective component of its representation.
