By the end of 2025, 42 African countries will have held national elections in the previous 24 months. But do these elections produce parliaments that accurately reflect the societies they serve? Aside from studies of women in Africa’s legislatures, there is surprisingly little information about this important issue.
Elected parliaments are the essence of representative democracy. Law makers are more likely to know what voters need and want if they are alike in age, gender, language, education or occupation.
As scholars of African politics, we wanted to find out if African legislators actually represented their voters. We compared the results of two separate surveys conducted between 2009 and 2012 across the same 17 African countries.
