18 months since his defeat in Uganda’s tainted presidential election, Bobi Wine is the one touring the world as his global stardom reaches new heights.

With elections scheduled for next year, Zimbabwe’s opposition and pro-democracy organizations are expressing concerns about recent appointments to the country’s electoral commission. For example, Jeffrey Smith, founder of pro-democracy outfit Vanguard Africa, believes free and fair elections in Zimbabwe remain elusive.

On the show this week, Marie-Noelle Nwokolo and pro-democracy activist Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, interrogate the role and relevance of election observer missions in light of Kenya’s recent election. Listen in on a candid conversation complementing processes in the quest to build substantive democracies.

I reached out to Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, to ask how it was going on election day. He and his team were monitoring polls in Kisumu, another hot spot for election violence in the past. “Some minor issues but nothing newsworthy or ominous yet,” he replied.

Jeffrey Smith, the Washington-based founding director of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy advocacy organization, says he finds Western inaction frustrating. “Museveni and the military regime have very carefully used the security question in Uganda as a cudgel to metaphorically bang the heads of U.S. policymakers into line,” he said.

“Fayulu is the most recent candidate to re-enter the US arena. A lobby filing made public this week reveals that the leader of the opposition party Engagement for Citizenship and Development hired a brand-new Washington advocacy firm, Future Pact LLC. … The firm is led by Bruce Fryer, and joining him on the contract is Jeffrey Smith of the pro-democracy nonprofit Vanguard Africa, which is managing an ‘independent free and fair campaign’ on behalf of Fayulu and organising disparate groups advocating for transparent elections in the DRC.”

“It seemed like a genuine effort on the part of the Biden administration to really stand together with democratic allies, here in the U.S. but also worldwide, and to start addressing these issues that have been quite honestly overlooked or otherwise ignored,” Jeffrey Smith, head of the pro-democracy advocacy group Vanguard Africa, said in an interview. … “When the U.S. is exhibiting strong leadership on democratic values and principles, people who are fighting for democracy in Uganda, for example, feel stronger and more emboldened, because they know that they have allies in Washington,” Smith explained. “These sorts of initiatives are not just symbolic. They’re really substantive in that regard.”

As Jeffrey Smith of Vanguard Africa notes in Foreign Policy, the [Summit for Democracy] should have invited a broad range of civil society activists, including ones from democracies and those who are opposition leaders, fighting for democracy from within authoritarian states."

Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, who was involved with Gambian activists in the fight against the Jammeh dictatorship, also added his voice to the celebrations following the verdict.

He said: “This court Judgement is a huge victory for accountability, and above all, a testament to the persistence and hard work of Gambian activists. Corrupt dictators like Yahya Jammeh should not be allowed to stash their stolen loot abroad, nor able to purchase U.S. properties with blood money. It’s unacceptable. … The many Gambian activists involved in this process should be immensely proud.”

“Yoweri Museveni is an autocrat, through and through. He is also a clever one,” argues Jeffrey Smith, the director of Vanguard Africa, a non-profit working to advise pro-democracy actors in African states. “Welcoming and resettling Afghan refugees is not an altruistic act on the part of Museveni, but rather a shrewd political manoeuvre. It follows a well-worn script: help to clean up America’s mess with the expectation that such assistance will curry favour in Washington and thereby allow the regime to literally get away with murder at home.”