{Benin businessman Patrice Talon, known as the “king of cotton”, has been declared winner of a presidential run-off, official preliminary results show.}<\/p>\n
His only challenger, Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, conceded defeat earlier.<\/p>\n
Mr Talon got 65% of the votes while Mr Zinsou secured 35%.<\/p>\n
Polls took place in four other African nations over the weekend, including Congo-Brazzaville, Cape Verde, Niger and Tanzania’s Zanzibar islands where the incumbent president won.<\/p>\n
“I feel like a soldier packing for the front. This is not a day of glory – congratulations will have to wait,” Mr Talon said, Reuters news agency reports.<\/p>\n
President Thomas Boni Yayi is stepping down after two terms.<\/p>\n
His decision to leave office stands in contrast to leaders in other African nations like Burundi, Rwanda and Congo-Brazzaville, which have altered their constitutions to extend presidential term limits.<\/p>\n
Mr Talon used to be a close ally of the outgoing president, but was accused of masterminding a plot to poison him in 2012, allegations he strongly denies.<\/p>\n
He returned from exile in France last October, after receiving a presidential pardon.<\/p>\n
This is a turnaround from the first round vote last month when Mr Talon came slightly behind Mr Zinsou, who is Franco-Beninese and used to head France’s largest investment bank.<\/p>\n
He was considered as “France’s candidate” by his detractors.<\/p>\n
{{Cape Verde’s opposition victorious}}<\/p>\n
The opposition also won in Cape Verde’s elections on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Movement for Democracy (MPD) has won an absolute majority, defeating the governing African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) for the first time in 15 years.<\/p>\n
{{Zanzibar’s 90% victory}}<\/p>\n
Sunday’s vote in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar was a re-run after the results of disputed local elections in October were cancelled.<\/p>\n
Incumbent President Ali Mohamed Shein has won a landslide victory, with the governing CCM party taking more than 90% of the vote in a disputed re-run.<\/p>\n
The opposition CUF party boycotted the vote, saying its candidate Seif Sharif Hamad won the poll in October.<\/p>\n
{{Counting in Niger, Congo-Brazzaville and Senegal}}<\/p>\n
The opposition also boycotted the poll in Niger where the BBC’s Ishaq Khalid says vote counting went into the night.<\/p>\n
Results of the presidential run-off are expected on Tuesday or Wednesday, with President Muhamadou Issoufou expected to win a second term.<\/p>\n
Opposition candidate, Hama Amadou, who was in jail on baby-trafficking charges he denies for the first round, was flown to Paris last week for medical treatment.<\/p>\n
{{Niger election explained}}<\/p>\n
Counting is ongoing in Congo-Brazzaville where President Denis Sassou Nguesso is expected to win another seven years in office.<\/p>\n
Police fired tear gas at opposition supporters after the close of voting – and telephone, text messages and the internet are still down on the orders of the government.<\/p>\n
Turnout in Senegal’s referendum on a new constitution that would cut presidential mandates from seven to five years is reported to be low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Benin businessman Patrice Talon, known as the “king of cotton”, has been declared winner of a presidential run-off, official preliminary results show.} His only challenger, Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, conceded defeat earlier. Mr Talon got 65% of the votes while Mr Zinsou secured 35%. Polls took place in four other African nations over the weekend, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24069"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24069"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}