In Zimbabwe, incumbent President Robert Mugabe looks set to extend his three-decade grip on power.
Official results show Mr Mugabe has trounced his long-standing rival Morgan Tsvangirai in last week's presidential election, with 61 per cent of the vote.
His ZANU-PF party has also swept to a crushing majority in simultaneous parliamentary elections.
Santilla Chingaipe looks at the election.
At 89, Robert Mugabe is Africa's oldest serving leader - and one of the most divisive and controversial leaders on the continent.
He was born in 1924 at a Jesuit mission north-west of the capital Harare, in what was then Rhodesia.
Reportedly a holder of seven university degrees, Mr Mugabe qualified as a teacher at the age of 17 before venturing into politics.
He first came to prominence after waging a guerrilla war against the white colonial rule led by Ian Smith who jailed him for 10 years over a speech he made in 1964.
Soon after his release from jail in 1974, Mr Mugabe led one side of negotiations which paved the way for the country's independence from Britain in 1980.
As leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union party, he became the first black Prime Minister of newly-named Zimbabwe.
Speaking shortly before sweeping to an election victory in 1980, Mr Mugabe explained what led to the movement to end colonialiasm.
"The revulsion I think started through stories that our parents used to narrate to us, how the white man came to the country, how he grabbed the land, in a society where you have a class who's main purpose and accepted privilege is to exploit others, you naturally get revulsed if the majority of people are being oppressed, being exploited. You can't avoid, if you have any moral principles at all, the call to do something about it."
Since then, Mr Mugabe has won a series of elections, further extending his grip on power.
And in 2000, he launched controversial land reforms, which drove thousands of white farmers off their land, replacing them with black farmers.
That process saw many farms become unproductive, and the national economy deteriorated in a country that was once described as Africa's breadbasket.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Mugabe said the land reforms were an issue of national sovereignty.
"The land reform is the best thing that could ever have happened to an African country. They (white farmers) occupied the land illegally, they seized the land from our people and therefore the process of reform, land reform involved having to hand over the land."
Many western nations, including Australia, proceeded to slap sanctions on Zimbabwe, citing alleged rights abuses by the government.
The country was also suspended from the Commonwealth in 2002 before it withdrew from the international body.
At the previous election in 2008, Mr Mugabe lost the first round of voting to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement of Democratic Change.
At the time, there were reports that the veteran leader was prepared to accept defeat, but was pushed by allies in the security forces to hang on.
It was the military that reportedly led a violent campaign in the lead up to the run-off election which Mr Tsvangirai boycotted following the killing of about 200 of his supporters.
After intervention from the 15-member Southern Africa Development Community, a unity government was formed between Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Mr Tsvangirai's M-D-C.
In March this year, Zimbabwe overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, which cleared the path to last week's elections.
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And, like every other election since he was first elected more than 33 years ago, Robert Mugabe was again declared the winner.
"Mugabe, Robert Gabriel of Zanu-PF party is therefore declared duly elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe."
African observers declared last week's election to have been peaceful and gave it broad approval.
But some independent domestic monitors described the vote as deeply flawed by registration problems.
They say this included the lack of availability of an updated voters' roll, as required by law.
Defeated candidate Morgan Tsvangirai has denounced the vote as a sham.
He says he will challenge the result in court, delaying Mr Mugabe's inauguration.
"The fraudulent and stolen elections has plunged Zimbabwe into a constitutional, political and economic crisis. In this regard the MDC expects that SADC and AU shall meet urgently to deal with the crisis in order to restore constitutional, political, legal legitimacy in this country."
In Australia, many Zimbabweans had been hoping the election would bring an end to Mr Mugabe's rule.
Japhet Ncube is the president of a group calling itself the Zimbabwe community in Australia.
Mr Ncube believes that irrespective of the outcome, the world will be watching closely to see what happens now.
"I think it doesn't take much time and because it just needs people to return back to their routines and people start doing things that they used to do right. And I think the support of the world as well, because I think what also comes into effect is how the other people perceives you as a country because I think the world has become a global village now and whatever Zimbabwe does its also being watched by the world and whatever the world does affects Zimbabwe."
Despite the endorsement by African observers, western nations including Australia have also raised serious doubts about last week's election.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Australia believes fresh elections should be called.
