This is Article 9 of a 24-part weekly newspaper series on voter trust and voting intentions in Africa. In the previous article, we examined fairness and showed that internal justice inside political parties is one of the hidden sources of external credibility. This article moves to a closely related but even more sensitive subject: inclusion and identity.
Across Africa, parties often speak the language of national unity while operating through narrower circles of access, influence, and recognition. The result is that many groups do not leave parties in one dramatic moment; they first switch off emotionally, and only later translate that disengagement into lower participation or different voting choices.
Inclusion matters because trust is not sustained by rules alone; it is sustained by whether people feel seen inside the political organisation. A party may have impressive structures, energetic rallies, and disciplined messaging, but if supporters from certain regions, ethnic communities, age groups, social classes, or religious minorities feel permanently peripheral, trust weakens over time.
Recent Afrobarometer findings show why this matters so much: across 25 African countries, 41percent of respondents said members of their ethnic group are treated unfairly by government at least sometimes, and perceptions of ethnic discrimination have increased since 2016/2018. The same survey found that only about one in five Africans say they trust people from other ethnic groups “a lot,” even though broader coexistence remains widely valued. These are not just social cohesion statistics; they are warning signs for political parties that underestimate how deeply perceived exclusion shapes political trust.
The first critical point is that identity politics in Africa is real, but it is not destiny. Oxford scholarship on political competition in Africa argues that ethnic cleavages are visible in many elections, yet parties are not condemned to remain trapped inside purely ethnic mobilisation; cross-ethnic appeals become possible when parties build credible linkages around policy, coalition-building, and representation. That means inclusion is not simply a moral appeal for diversity; it is also a strategic requirement for parties that want to grow beyond their inherited bases.
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When people from outside a party’s historic core do not see credible routes into influence, they may still attend rallies or vote tactically, but they do not attach deep trust to the organisation. Their support remains thin, contingent, and easily reversible. A party that confuses temporary electoral reach with genuine inclusion is therefore storing up future instability.
This is why marginalised groups often disengage before elections long before party leaders notice the danger. Emotional withdrawal usually comes first. Members stop attending meetings regularly, stop defending the party in difficult conversations, stop volunteering, and stop imagining a future for themselves or their children inside the organisation.
Later, this emotional distance affects turnout, campaign energy, and willingness to mobilise neighbours. Afrobarometer’s 2025 flagship report is especially relevant here because it finds no consistent continent-wide rise in engagement over the past decade and notes that some indicators, especially party affiliation, have declined. When attachment weakens in this way, electoral decline is often only the last visible stage of a much longer process.
Youth exclusion is one of the clearest examples of this pattern. Africa’s political future is young, yet party structures in many countries remain heavily senior, gatekept, and suspicious of internal renewal. Earlier Afrobarometer work on youth participation anticipated this problem by noting that younger Africans may relate differently to existing political parties and are more likely to disengage when party messages feel stale or unresponsive.
If young supporters conclude that they are wanted only as crowd fillers, online defenders, or foot soldiers, but not as serious participants in decision-making, trust thins quickly. The damage is not only numerical; it is symbolic, because younger citizens often read exclusion as evidence that the party’s promises of renewal are performative rather than real.
Regional exclusion works in a similar way, especially in countries where parties have identifiable strongholds and neglected zones. Where leadership, messaging, resource allocation, and candidate selection repeatedly favour one bloc, other regions may remain formally loyal while becoming emotionally distant. This is particularly dangerous because regional loyalty can survive publicly even after trust has weakened privately.
Supporters continue to wear party colours and vote out of habit, but they no longer campaign with conviction or defend the party under pressure. Once a credible alternative appears, the accumulated resentment can move very quickly. Inclusion, in that sense, is not about symbolic balancing for its own sake; it is about preventing the slow conversion of neglected regions into future swing zones.
Identity arrogance deepens the problem. Parties sometimes begin to believe that they “own” certain ethnic, religious, class, or regional constituencies by history, tradition, or inherited loyalty. That mindset is politically dangerous because it replaces listening with assumption.
Research on race and bloc voting in South Africa shows that identity-based voting is more complex than simple group membership, and that perceived distance from the “prototype” of the group can shape how people align politically. The lesson for parties more broadly is clear: identity affiliation is never as automatic or permanent as leaders imagine. Once supporters feel that their dignity is taken for granted, belonging becomes brittle.
Inclusion also has a linguistic and cultural dimension that many parties ignore. A recent Cambridge study on Nigeria shows how language practices inside public institutions affect inclusion politics and social identity, demonstrating that exclusion is not only about formal representation but also about the everyday experience of whose voice sounds normal, respected, and legitimate.
The same principle applies inside parties. If internal communication, symbolic language, and leadership style continually privilege one social world over others, those at the margins quickly understand that they are present but not central. Trust then weakens not because they reject the party’s stated ideals, but because they do not see themselves reflected in its living culture.
The most rigorous way to think about inclusion, therefore, is not as public relations but as institutional design. Parties must ask who gets heard, who gets promoted, who gets disciplined, who is consulted, and who is always expected to wait. If inclusion is real, members from different identities should be able to see a plausible pathway from support to influence. If inclusion is performative, the same surnames, regions, factions, and social types will continue to dominate every serious layer of power. Voters notice this pattern far more quickly than party elites assume. Once they do, ideological language starts to sound hollow because the party’s lived practice contradicts its stated identity.
This is why inclusion sits at the centre of trust generation and trust sustenance. People do not trust organisations that invite them to sacrifice but deny them voice. They do not remain emotionally connected to parties that celebrate them during rallies and ignore them during appointments, internal elections, and strategic decisions. Inclusion does not guarantee unity, because politics will always involve competition, but it makes competition feel survivable. That, in turn, is what keeps disappointment from turning into withdrawal and withdrawal from becoming electoral collapse.
The next article builds directly on this argument by examining another force that increasingly shapes trust in African politics. Article 10 will explore communication, media, and religion, showing how public narratives, religious authority, and digital platforms can either broaden trust or harden distrust depending on how political parties use them.
>>>Dr. Sammy Crabbe is an experienced political leader with a distinguished record in party governance, organisational reform, and institutional strengthening within the New Patriotic Party (NPP), a major political party in Ghana. He has served at senior levels of the party, including as Greater Accra Regional Chairman and later as 2nd National Vice Chairman, where he coordinated complex party structures, improved internal accountability, and helped modernise operational processes across multiple constituencies and regions.
Drawing on his academic and professional background, Dr. Crabbe has also introduced technology-enabled approaches to improve organisation, transparency, and data-driven management within the party. He holds a PhD in Business and Management from the Institute of Digital and Sustainable Futures at the University of Bradford, an MBA in International Marketing, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Research.
