Across West Africa, the voting age is 18, but the age to stand for president ranges from 30 in The Gambia to 50 in Togo, Global Voices reports.
In several countries the gap between the two thresholds spans two decades or more, and in legislative races the bar is lower but still above the voting age.
Senegal, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire set presidential eligibility at 35. Benin, Ghana and Guinea set it at 40.
For legislative seats, Togo, Benin, Senegal and Nigeria’s House of Representatives require candidates to be 25, while Ghana’s threshold is 21.
Togo’s parliamentary republic
Togo changed its system in May 2024, when it legally became a parliamentary republic under a new constitution.
That constitution sets the eligibility age for President of the Republic at 50, and parliament now elects the president, whose powers are limited.
Executive authority rests with the President of the Council of Ministers, who must be at least 40 and is not chosen in a public presidential election.
Faure Gnassingbé has held that position since May 3, 2025, the same day parliament elected Jean-Lucien Savi de Tové, 86, as the country’s oldest-ever incoming president of the Republic.
The country’s age limits have moved before. In 2002, the National Assembly lowered the presidential eligibility age from 45 to 35, a reform the opposition called tailor-made for Faure Gnassingbé.
Ghana and Nigeria lower the bar
In Accra on July 30, 2026, the Ghanaian government agreed in principle to lower the minimum presidential eligibility age from 40 to 35, defying the Constitutional Review Committee’s recommendation of 30.
The legislation would ultimately go to a referendum, requiring 40 percent turnout and 75 percent approval.
Nigeria set a regional precedent in 2018. Under pressure from the youth-led Not Too Young To Run campaign, the law lowered the presidential eligibility age from 40 to 35 and the House of Representatives’ eligibility age from 30 to 25.
According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, lowering the minimum presidential age leads to younger parliaments.
Côte d’Ivoire offers a different case: in 2016 it removed the maximum age limit of 75 for running for office, and incumbent President Alassane Ouattara, 83, ran for another term in 2025.
Voting less, protesting more
An Afrobarometer survey in August 2025 found that people aged 18 to 35 were less active than their elders in almost all traditional forms of political participation.
Across the continent they trailed by 18 percentage points in voting, and by a record 29 points in Senegal. Protests were the only exception.
In Lomé, the June 6 Movement, sparked by the rapper Aamron’s arrest, brought thousands of people onto the streets.
According to the Media Foundation for West Africa, the subsequent crackdown, which the International Federation for Human Rights blamed on government-backed militiamen, left seven dead.
In Madagascar, September 2025 protests toppled President Andry Rajoelina’s government and resulted in a military takeover.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Rajoelina himself came to power in 2019 on the back of a protest, at just 34 years old.
In Kenya, street protests forced the withdrawal of the 2024 Finance Bill. In Morocco, youth-led protests prompted authorities to announce youth candidacy incentives and to prosecute specific ringleaders.
The representation gap
An Inter-Parliamentary Union report published on April 9, 2026, found that elected officials aged 30 and under account for just 2.8 percent of all parliamentarians worldwide.
Progress has stalled since 2023 for the first time since 2014, and 37.1 percent of legislative houses have no parliamentarians in that age group.
The gap matters in a region where people under 35 account for roughly 70 percent of West Africa’s population, according to the West Africa Youth Democracy Conference.
IPU data shows that at the start of Ghana’s 2025 parliamentary term, despite a legal minimum age of 21, no parliamentarians were aged 30 or under. Those aged 31 to 40 held 46 of the 269 seats, or 17.1 percent.
After Senegal’s 2024 legislative elections, the National Assembly had five members under 30, about 3 percent, and an average age of 47, even though almost 38 percent of registered voters were aged 18 to 35.
Senegal’s youngest-ever president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, was elected at 44, and only became an official candidate after his mentor, Ousmane Sonko, was disqualified.
In Nigeria, International IDEA reported that in 2015 only three of the 360 members of the House of Representatives were between 18 and 25, rising to 14 in 2019.
In Dakar, the head of Yiaga Africa, the organization behind the Not Too Young to Run campaign, summed up the situation by stating that the political arena is more open on paper than in reality.
Afrobarometer has identified a paradox: young people vote less than their elders, yet they are also excluded from seats of power and from the polls.
The IPU warns that young people’s absence from parliamentary assemblies undermines institutional legitimacy and jeopardizes trust in democracy.
Senegal, listed in the 2026 IPU report among countries where parliament grew younger in the most recent elections, shows that rejuvenation is possible when a political agenda empowers a generation.
Money, parties and obstacles
Supporters of high age limits demand experience. Across the 34 countries Afrobarometer surveyed, citizens favor an average leadership age of 39.
Those calling for lower limits seek measures such as lower eligibility ages, quotas and forums for young parliamentarians. As Nigeria shows, the main obstacle is often financial.
Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress has set the total cost of its 2027 presidential nomination and expression-of-interest forms at NGN 100 million (USD 75,000), comprising NGN 30 million (USD 22,521) for the expression of interest and NGN 70 million (USD 52,550) for the nomination.
Senate forms cost NGN 20 million (USD 15,014) and House of Representatives forms NGN 10 million (USD 7,507). Young people receive a 50 percent discount only on nomination fees, leaving the presidential bill at NGN 65 million (USD 48,789).
A Nigerian civil society group calculated that workers earning the minimum wage of NGN 70,000 (USD 52) a month would have to work more than a century to buy some of these forms.
The Electoral Act, 2026, signed on February 18, also doubled the presidential candidate’s campaign spending limit to NGN 10 billion (USD 7.5 million) and tripled that of governorship candidates to NGN 3 billion (USD 2.2 million).
At the initiative of ECOWAS and the youth-led advocacy organization Legis360, delegates from 12 countries gathered in Dakar to bring these obstacles to the forefront.
In their communiqué they launched the West Africa Youth Observer Network and called for youth quotas, reduced candidate fees and spending limits. ECOWAS later announced it would deploy youth-only election observers for Nigeria’s presidential election on January 16, 2027.
Other countries show how laws can directly affect nominations. According to the IPU, Ecuador owes much of its progress to a 2022 law requiring 25 percent of its candidates to be young adults.
Countries with term limits also have considerably more young parliamentarians than the global average. In 2023, the IPU noted that limited youth funding and a lack of spending limits contributed to aging parliamentary assemblies.
Elsewhere the obstacles are political.
In Benin, after the main opposition candidate, Les Démocrates, was disqualified for failing to meet election requirements, President Romuald Wadagni faced only one opponent, Paul Hounkpe, and won the April 12, 2026, presidential election with 94.27 percent of the vote.
In 2024, a constitutional reform extended the presidential term from five to seven years and raised the minimum vote threshold for securing National Assembly seats from 10 percent to 20 percent of parliamentary election votes.
In Burkina Faso, the military junta dissolved all political parties in January 2026. In The Gambia, President Barrow will run for a third term in the December 5 presidential election.
Source: Global Voices
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