Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and Uganda have one thing in common – all are preparing for Presidential elections in the coming months, and in the running are political veterans well past retirement age who are either clinging to power or plotting a return to it.

If it were up to me, none of them would be on the ballot. Lest I’m accused of ageism – the so-called last frontier of discrimination – my objection has nothing to do with the number of candles on their last birthday cake. Nelson Mandela became President at 75, Warren Buffett still steers one of the top companies in the US at 93 and Michael Bloomberg is still juggling business and philanthropy at 82. Clearly, age can just be a number and longevity does not automatically disqualify one from leading.

My gripe is not with age, but with tenure – specifically, old-timers who have already had their turn, often more than once, and are still hanging on or staging a comeback. The question is: After all this time, what fresh ideas or renewed energy can they realistically bring to the table?

In Malawi, Presidential elections are scheduled for September. The incumbent, the hugely disappointing Lazarus Chakwera, infamous for his love for international travel – which saw him fly to London to attend a virtual meeting ostensibly because of poor connectivity in his country, has thrown his hat in the ring. So too has Peter Mutharika, the now 84-year-old who succeeded his elder brother, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, and would have served a second term had the courts not voided his re-election owing to ballot fraud. Seventy-year-old Joyce Banda, another former President, completes the three-horse race.

While the legacy of Banda’s short-lived Presidency – from April 2012 to May 2014 – is debatable, it can be safely said that Mutharika did not exactly cover himself in glory. Given the electoral fraud that put paid to his ambitions for a second term and links to previous corruption allegations, he is hardly the most suitable person to lead a country with a Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranking of 115 out of 180 countries. He didn’t shine on the economic front either, and someone who can breathe life into Malawi’s growth prospects is precisely what the country needs, given its spiking unemployment and other symptoms of an economy under strain.

A month after Malawians go to the polls, their counterparts in Cameroon and CÔte d’Ivoire will also elect a new President or extend the mandate of the incumbent. In the former, that incumbent is 92-year-old Paul Biya, who has been ensconced in State House since 1982, making him Africa’s second- longest-serving head of State after Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema.

Biya may have been credited with establishing a multiparty democracy in Cameroon and deepening the nation’s ties with Western powers, but he has proved ineffective in ending a seven-year civil war led by Anglophone separatists in the south-western and north-western regions, which has dampened economic performance. One symptom of this is that 23% of the population wallows in extreme poverty. And like Malawi, recent corruption indices have shown Cameroon to be one of the world’s most corrupt countries.

Alassane Ouattara, the Ivorian leader, announced on June 27 that he will be running again in October. Should he triumph, he will be 88 when his new mandate ends in 2030, and he would have governed the West African nation for a consecutive 19 years, having ascended to the Presidency in 2011. A Outtara win is a realistic prospect, given that three heavyweight challengers have been barred by the courts from contesting – a move that could be a recipe for instability, according to some commentators.

Moving into 2026, an old-timer contestant who stands out is Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, who announced at the end of last month that he will be seeking to extend his 39-year rule.

To repeat, I’m not against their candidatures on the basis of their advanced years. Their countries need fresh ideas on how to resolve current challenges. What happened to the ancient wisdom that a good dancer knows when to leave the stage?