From Libreville to Maputo: Recent elections across Africa and the role of Integrity Due Diligence in global investment

Recent elections have shined a spotlight on political and economic developments across sub-Saharan Africa, alerting investors that are looking for refreshed growth areas. In this piece we discuss the 2025 Gabonese presidential election and other recent elections and political changes in Africa. These developments reveal how volatile transitions can impact foreign investment, governance risk, and regulatory exposure. In an era of unpredictable change, robust Integrity Due Diligence (IDD) frameworks can help global investors to safeguard interests and maintain resilience against emerging geographic political risks.

Political elections across Africa since 2024

Across the African continent, recent elections demonstrate a complex political environment with a lot of changes. In April 2025, for example, Gabon held its first presidential election since the August 2023 military coup that ousted the heavily criticised Bongo regime following decades of authoritarian rule, with General Brice Oligui Nguema, who also led the coup, securing a landslide victory with over 90% of the vote. The election was hailed by supporters as a return to civilian rule, but critics questioned the competitiveness and transparency of the process, given the military’s ongoing influence and the apparent absence of meaningful opposition. The term Nguema now holds – which was also extended to seven years under the military’s 2024 constitutional changes – marks a new phase in Gabonese politics, but observers are divided as to whether it represents a true departure from centralised control.

Major political changes have swept many countries in Africa in recent years, for example:

• In Senegal, the March 2024 election saw the rise of 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye, marking a generational shift after months of tension over delays and suppression.
• In South Africa, the African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in three decades in May 2024, forcing it to join an unprecedented coalition with its opposite on the political spectrum, the Democratic Alliance.
• Botswana saw a significant change in October 2024 as the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change ended over five decades of single-party dominance.

Meanwhile, Chad and Mozambique have reinforced concerns about electoral legitimacy: Chad’s transitional president Mahamat Déby retained power in May 2024 following a controversial process rooted in his father’s prior rule; and Mozambique’s ruling party, FRELIMO, claimed victory in October 2024 amid widespread protests and allegations of fraud, with the EU’s Election Observation Mission having also documented “unjustified alteration of election results”, ballot-stuffing, pro-FRELIMO staff at polling stations, and restricted access to voting counting.

The impact of political risks

For global investors, these shifts are not abstract political issues—they directly impact the investment climate as political volatility heightens risks around regulatory changes, contract enforcement, and market entry. Unstable governments can also raise the risk of asset appropriation and seizures, regulatory overreach, the revocation or alteration of licenses and concessions, and a corresponding increase in international arbitration claims from damaged businesses. All of these risks can adversely affect foreign operations, and in some cases also global reputation. Investors may therefore wish to reassess the risks to their operations in the light of political realignments and regulatory fragility.

The reputational and compliance implications are also considerable. Investors with ties to Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)—such as members of the ruling elite or newly empowered interim governments—may face scrutiny under extraterritorial anti-bribery and anti-corruption regimes, including the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act. The rapid changing political norms and the use of state powers to target opposition figures or business rivals can also create misinformation or even a sea-change in who is (or is not) subject to criminal investigation or prosecution. In this environment, due diligence must go beyond basic vetting to try to understand the wider context of what is alleged.

How Integrity Due Diligence (IDD) can help to navigate these risks

In this shifting political context, IDD (especially information coming from interviews with people in country) becomes not just a risk management tool, but a strategic necessity. IDD can assess political exposure, map beneficial ownership structures, review sanction and litigation histories, monitor policy developments, and evaluate the influence of informal networks such as tribal or military alliances (especially in countries where there is no tradition of an investigative or free media, or the public record is otherwise limited). Such diligence provides a groundwork for understanding the implications of sudden or unpredictable political change but should also be updated as political events unfold (and not merely conducted at the outset of a transaction or relationship).

Political transitions can alter investment dynamics overnight. For those operating in emerging or politically transitional markets, robust, forward-looking due diligence offers a solid foundation of protection against volatility, reputational damage, and regulatory exposure. It is not enough to react—savvy investors must anticipate. And in doing so, they can turn compliance into competitive advantage.

Deloitte’s IDD services

Our services empower investors with tailored insights and adaptive frameworks to tackle country risks:

• Strategic Advisory and 360° Political Environment Analysis: weekly and/or monthly monitoring to understand the rapidly changing political environment and how it impacts your business;
• Custom IDD Framework: to map political exposure and other risks across your corporate structure, joint ventures and counterparties, including beneficial-ownership tracing, PEP screening, and sanction/litigation history;
• Site visits: for some jurisdictions where online public records are lacking, our network of local researchers can undertake physical checks of business locations to ensure they are what the third party portrays them to be, as well as retrieve local copy documentation which are not available online, such as corporate registry records.

For more information on how Deloitte can support you with building and running a modern IDD compliance framework against complicated political risks, please contact Jorge Rivera (jorrivera@deloitte.co.uk), Rick Dickerson (rdickerson@deloitte.co.uk) and Dr. Yiyun Ding (yiyunding@deloitte.co.uk) in our Corporate Intelligence Services team.