Ghana, Gambia, and Gabon are all small African countries with names beginning with the letter \"G,\" which held presidential elections in 2016. But neither the electoral landscapes nor the electoral outcomes can fruitfully be analyzed without giving greater weight to the contrasts than to the similarities. The same applies to the even wider set of 14 African countries with presidential elections last year, or the 8 so far scheduled to hold elections in 2017.

Editor\'s Note

From 2011 to 2013, the governments of [ten oil-producing African countries] sold over 2.3 billion barrels of oil. These sales, worth more than $250 billion, equal a staggering 56 percent of their combined government revenues. But, reveals a new report from Swiss and international nongovernmental organizations, there is little transparency about these sales, a quarter of which were made to littleknown Swiss trading companies.

Editor's Note