Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai. Electoral Politics, Laws and Ethnicity in Africa, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. xv + 270 pp. Index. $98.84. Paper. ISBN: 978-3031341380.

Numerous scholars have contributed to the debate on electoral politics in postcolonial Africa, such as Steytler and Fombad (Nico Steytler and Charles M Fombad (2021) Elections, Democracy and Constitutionalism in Africa, p.1.),who remarked that some regimes were "concealing authoritarianism under the veneer of elections."In light of this, I am happy to review a recently written book by Abdulai, who is not only a legal scholar at the University of Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College, but participated in the monitoring of African elections for more than a decade.His book focuses on analyzing electionrelated issues in Africa with reference to Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.The introductory chapter provides the legal framework in which African elections are held.Chapter Two presents a review of the African and international legal instruments.In Chapter Three, Abdulai discusses the constitutional framework for elections in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.He particularly compares the jurisprudence on elections that were held in the selected countries between 2011 and 2021.Though his presentation is impressive, further analysis of postelection dispute resolution would add value to the book.Chapter Four, which shows how Electoral Commissions are essential in electoral systems (61), is informative.Indeed he presents a detailed discussion of the models of Electoral Commissions, how they were established, their roles, and their responsibilities.He reminds us that all the Electoral Commissions in, particularly, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Sierra Leone, are classified under the independent model.He expresses reservations about the "independence" of some of the countries' electoral commissions which have been blamed for electoral irregularities.For instance, he points to the alleged partiality of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on which Raila Odinga based his challenge to the elections of 2013.This was later expressed by protests against the IEBC which was accused of being biased in favour of Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee Coalition just before Kenya's 2017 election.He concludes the chapter by stating that almost all the so-called independent commissions in the four countries lack "substantive/practical independence" (75).