Preliminary Statement: African Union and COMESA Election Observation Mission to the 13th August 2026 General Election in the Republic of Zambia

The joint AU-COMESA mission deployed 93 short-term observers, 52 per cent of them women, drawn from 27 African countries, having earlier deployed 33 observer teams across eight provinces; on election day it observed voting at 740 polling stations across all 226 constituencies and found voting conducted in a generally peaceful and orderly environment at 98.6 per cent of stations visited, while on-time opening fell to 66 per cent from 89 per cent at the mission's 2021 observation. It criticises the timing of the reforms: the Electoral Processes Act No. 12 of 2026, which operationalises the 2025 constitutional amendment, was passed in May 2026, three months before polling and in the week parliament was dissolved. It records that the constitutional delimitation criteria were never operationalised in legislation, so the formula used to create the 70 new constituencies remains unclear, and that the exercise concluded on 16 April 2026. It records the ECZ's temporary suspension of counting and announcement of results on 14 August, citing security concerns, and that opposition leader Brian Mundubile publicly claimed victory before the ECZ could announce results. It reports registration of 8,786,300 voters, of whom 1.5 million were new against a projection of 3.5 million, a fall in women's National Assembly candidacies from 21 per cent in 2021 to 12.5 per cent in 2026, and lists misinformation and disinformation among the growing challenges of the campaign period without identifying any organised actor behind it.