Ghana’s cliff-hanger elections and another successful transition start Africa’s year on a positive note. It left those who had been predicting mayhem puzzling why Ghana failed to follow Kenya’s descent last year into chaos after a similarly close-run and disputed election. The answers, Ghanaians say, are in their political traditions, the credibility of the electoral commission and the local media’s vigilance. Yet some senior figures in the main parties still favoured fighting out the election on the streets. Politicians across Africa are studying Ghana’s vote closely ahead of more than 20 elections due in 2009. Doubtless, the defeat of a previously popular governing party reflects the effects of last year’s rocketing food and fuel prices and concern about jobs. These will matter hugely in Southern Africa’s six elections this year, particularly in South Africa, where the governing ANC faces a challenge from a party of ANC dissidents. And for the first time, the economic and political chaos in Zimbabwe will be a major issue for voters in the region. That might bolster moves by the ruling ZANU-PF hierarchy finally to edge out President Mugabe. Further north in Algeria, Congo-Brazzaville, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, Niger and Sudan, elections this year are unlikely to be harbingers of change: for those incumbent regimes, the vote will be a masquerade behind which the real politics continues.