Social media is becoming a dominant factor in electoral processes, with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp increasingly having a tremendous influence on the creation, dissemination and consumption of political content in Africa. The social media platforms collect and collate large amounts of data from their users. The power of algorithms in filtering, ranking, selecting and recommending content makes them a significant factor in election campaigns. The objective of this chapter is to examine how these social media algorithms and bots are influencing elections in the African context. The chapter argues that social media algorithms and bots are slowly changing the dynamics of elections in Africa, presenting new prospects as well as challenges for the fledgling democracies.
