It votes at 18, but access to the presidency is negotiated at very different ages.
Originally published in Global Voices in Spanish
Youth movements in Africa; Screenshot of the DW Afrique on YouTube.
At 18, a young man in West Africa can choose his president. At the age of 25, it was sometimes available to Parliament. In order to apply to the Supreme Magistrature, he must start at the age of 35, 40 or even 50 according to the country. In 2026, these limits begin to move, but real obstacles are often found elsewhere.
Young people are judged too isolated in choosing their leaders, but not to seek to replace them. Young people are at the heart of political movements: they vote, they militate, they campaign, they go to the streets. But at the time of asking for the vote of their fellow citizens, they are collided with a closed door. Can a democracy that gives them the right to choose be considered inclusive, but limit their ability to be elected?
Age, barrier with variable geometry
In many countries, it is voted at 18, but access to the presidency is negotiated at very different ages: 30 years in Gambia35 years in Senegal, Nigeria and Ivory Coast, 40 years in Benin, Ghana andGuinea. For Parliament, the barrier is lower: 25 years for Togo, Benin, Senegal and the House of Representatives of Nigeria, 21 years in Ghana.
The Togolese case requires careful reading. The Constitution of 2024 set the age of the President of the Republic at 50, but then elects Parliament and only has limited powers. The real power returns to the President of the Council, for which he is only 40 years old and has not been elected in presidential elections. Faure Gnassingbé has been in office since 3 May 2025. Parliament elected him on the same day as Jean- Lucien Savi of Tové, 86 years old, President of the Republic, the oldest in the country's history to have access to this function. On the other hand, age is not intangible. In 2002, the minimum age for election to the presidency from 45 to 35 years, reform that the opposition saw as a measure for Faure Gnassingbé.
The most recent case comes from Acra. On 30 July 2026, the Ghanaian Government accepted to lower the minimum age for the presidency from 40 to 35 years, while the constitutional review committee proposed that it be 30 years. The text must go through a referendum that requires 40% participation and 75% of the votes in favour. The regional precedent is in Nigeria, where the law Not Too Young To Run (not too young to apply) in 2018 the age of the presidency from 40 to 35 years and of the House of Representatives from 30 to 25 years was reduced, under campaign pressure led by young people.
The data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union show that the reduction in the minimum age for postulation leads to younger representatives in Parliament. Ivory Coast recalls the hidden reality of 2025 when the outgoing president, Alassane Ouattara, of 83 years, was a candidate for a new term while the age limit of 75 years was eliminated in 2016. The law hardly protects younger generations.
An active youth, but especially on the street
However, African youth are not massively committed in all categories. According to Aphrobarometer (August 2025, 39 countries), people between the ages of 18 and 35 are less present than their elders in almost all classic forms of participation, with 18-point delay for voting and a 29-point difference with Senegal. Protest is an exception.
In Togo, June 6 Movementafter the arrest of rapper Aamron, he made thousands go out to the streets of Lomé in June 2025. The repression caused seven dead, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa, International Federation for Human Rights He blamed the militia. In Madagascar, the September 2025 protest overthrew the Government before a military coup took place. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies notes that the President overthrown He came to power at the age of 34, following a protest. In Kenya, the streets removed part of the 2024 finance law, in Morocco, the mobilization of the end of 2025 led the authorities to announce incentives for young people's applications, while continuing to pursue some leaders. Those movements without bosses get concessions But they find it difficult to last without parties or trade unions to support them.
It is precisely this transition from protest to power that ECOWS / ECOWAS included on the agenda of its first regional conference on youth and democracy, held in Dakar in September 2026 under the slogan "From activism to taking power." The participants recalled at the conference that young people represent about 70% of the region's population, according to the Final communiqué.
Between participation and representation: the glass ceiling
The 2025 report of the Inter-Parliamentary Unionpublished on April 9, 2026, presents a conclusion that the elected under 30 years of age or less represent 2.8% of the world's parliamentarians, with no progress since 2023, the first since 2014. More than one third of the cameras (37.1%) have none.
Ghana, according to data of the Inter-Parliamentary Unionno Member was less than 30 years of age or less at the beginning of the 2025 legislature, and those between 31 and 40 years of age hold 46 seats out of 269, or 17.1%, while the law allows for a seat from the age of 21. In Senegal, Assembly resulting from the legislative elections of 2024 five representatives under 30, which represents 3 per cent, with an average age of 47, while almost 38 per cent of registered voters are between 18 and 35. Bassirou Diomaye Faye, elected at age 44, is the youngest president in the country's history, but his candidacy was imposed after his mentor, Ousmane Sonko, was disqualified. Nigeria, according to International IDEAIn the House there were three young representatives out of a total of 360 in 2015 and 14 in 2019: a real but modest advance. In Dakar, the director of Yiaga Africa, an organization that promoted the campaign, summarized the situation and said that political space is more open in theory than in practice
Aphrobarometer reveals a paradox. Although young people vote less than their elders, they are kept away from power centres and ballot boxes. The representation deficit is not only suffered, it also feeds the non-participation. The Inter-Parliamentary Union warns that the lack of young people in assemblies weakens the legitimacy of institutions and confidence in democracy. However, Senegal - the report of the Inter-Parliamentary Union of 2026 mentions it among the countries whose Parliament has been more rejuvenated after the last elections - shows that renewal is possible when a political project is in place for a generation.
A pact to reinvent: money, parties, obstacles
The advocates of the high limits invoke the experience. In 34 countries, citizens surveyed by Aphrobarometer on average, they express a minimum age of 39 years to preside. Those who advocate this reduction are committed to the renewal and measures that the Inter-Parliamentary Union considers to be proven, in particular the reduction of the minimum age for postponement, quotas and forums for young parliamentarians. However, Nigeria's example shows that the main obstacle is financial.
For 2027, the ruling party, Congress of All Progressive, has set 100 million nairas (about $75,000, according to Global Voices) the price of the presidential form, of which 30 million are expressions of interest and 70 million are postulations. The Senate costs 20 million and the House of Representatives costs 10 million. Young people get a half reduction in "candidacy" alone, leaving the presidential bill at 65 million. A citizen group has calculated that a worker with a minimum wage, 70,000 nairas per month (almost $52)I should work more than a hundred years to be able to pay for those forms. The electoral law of 2026signed on 18 February, It doubled the ceiling for the presidential campaign to 10 billion nairas and tripled that of the governors to 3 billion.
Meeting Dakar between 8 and 10 September, at the initiative of ECOSOC / ECOWAS and the Legis360 organization, delegates from 12 countries have prioritized these measures. Su communicated calls for youth quotas, reduced registration quotas and expenditure ceilings, and presents a network of observers, WAYON. ECOWS / ECOWAS announced that it will deploy exclusively young observers for the Nigerian presidential elections, scheduled for the 16 January 2027.
Other countries demonstrate that the law can directly influence applications. Ecuador, cited by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, owes much of its progress to a 2022 law that requires 25 per cent of candidates to be young adults, and countries with mandate limits have significantly more young parliamentarians than the global average. In 2023the Inter-Parliamentary Union has already noted the lack of funding for young people and the lack of spending limits as a cause of the ageing of the assemblies.
In other places, the obstacles are political. In Benin, Romuald Wadagni won the presidential elections of April 12 with the 94.27% of the votes, in front of a single rival, after exclusion of the main opposition candidate. A constitutional reform extended the terms of office to seven years and raised the threshold required to obtain seats in the United Nations 10% to 20%and that rule weighs much more than a date of birth for a candidate without political structure. In Burkina Faso, board dissolved all the parties in January 2026. In the Gambia, in the presidential elections of December 5, President Barrow will seek a third term.
Including in suffrage, incomplete in representation
Is a system that gives young people the right to choose their leaders fully inclusive, but limits their ability to lead? The data says it all, and not just because of age. Age requirements are being reduced: Nigeria has already reduced them, and Ghana is committed to reducing them. But they are more a symptom than a cause, and reduce them without treating the cost of the nominations, the rules of the parties and the opening of the political game would amount to opening a door to a ladder too expensive. What separates young people from decision-making centres are the costly and closed nominations, the rejected nominations and sometimes the very lack of parties.
As long as the street does not have credible institutional representatives, it will take off concessions or give way, as in Madagascar, to other powers than what it expected. The real task of the West African democratic pact is to make youth the promised future of politics, and also a present and effective component of its representation.
