This paper builds a theory about electoral discourse in Africa and the salience of political issues since the return of competitive elections in the early 1990s, based on empirical materials from recent elections in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Senegal, six roughly similar semi-democratic francophone states in West Africa, which have conducted a least one reasonably free and fair election since the early 1990s. Drawing on content analysis from newspapers, the electronic press, party websites, as well as interviews and secondary sources on elections in these countries, we formulate two empirical arguments; first, issues do in fact captivate and potentially mobilize African voters. Our survey of the subregion suggests that politics is more substantive than generally credited. Second, however, we argue that political parties in the subregion fail to mobilize citizens along many of these issues, for two primary reasons. First, we hypothesize that the shared values and identities of political actors emerging during third wave transitions in the region shaped conceptions of what constitutes democratic politics. For the most part, the world view of Francophone, secular, elites have come to dominate political discourse, restricting the types of issues that could be incorporated into formal politics. Secondly, we employ the concept of issue-ownership to explain why opposition parties have difficulty mobilizing voters with programmatic rhetoric, and shy away from other issues, despite their vote-mobilizing potential.