He, however, dismissed speculations that the EC would use the electronic voting process for Election 2012.
Dr Afari-Gyan was speaking on the third day of a public lecture, organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences with support from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, in Accra.
The three-day forum, which started on June 27 to 29, 2011, is on the theme: “Elections and the Democratic Challenges in Africa”.
Dr Afari-Gyan, who spoke on: “challenges Encountered in Acceptance of Election Results by Politicians in Africa”, said the use of biometric voter registration in Africa holds the promise of ending multiple registrations.
He explained that preventing unqualified persons from registering for elections required the collective effort of the Election Management Body (EMB), civil society organisations and the electorate.
Dr Afari-Gyan said in some African countries, in-fighting associated with the nomination of candidates at the party level had generated more rancour and violence than main election campaign.
He said sometimes the EMB placed obstacles in the way of some prospective candidates or even sought to disqualify them without justifiable cause, adding that such candidates may be reluctant to accept results when they lost elections.
Dr Afari-Gyan also said insufficient funding or late release of funds might make it difficult for the EMB to roll out an orderly and transparent process, to the discomfort of candidates and voters.
He said the lack of planning may result in inadequate logistics and shortage of materials whiles corrupt officials both permanent and temporary may adulterate results leading to the cancellation of some results.
Dr Afari-Gyan also said that one major flaw in African elections was the abuse of incumbency in terms of the use of state or government property in support of activities of the party in power.
He cited that some governments interfered in election administration, particularly at the regional and district levels where political bosses wrongly assumed the position of election officials.
Dr Afari-Gyan said there was an abiding tendency to turn state functions into virtual party campaign grounds, and also government dominance of the public media was widespread.
He said the crux of the matter was whether candidates mutually respected one another as legitimate aspirants for the office they were seeking.
Dr Afari-Gyan said: In this connection, certain syndrome tends to afflict some politicians and make it difficult for them to respect their opponents and to accept defeat at the polls.
“We don’t need a specialist for a diagnosis. We only need to watch and listen to politicians carefully to tell if they are afflicted with a syndrome”.
Mr Kwasi Amakye Boateng, a Lecturer at the Political science Department, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, who spoke on: Election Monitoring”, said though the issue of election monitoring is sensitive given its intrusion into the internal affairs of most African countries, the phenomenon had come to stay.
He said the process should be made to work and impact positively on the democratisation of the African continent.
Mr Boateng said most Sub-Saharan African countries in the 1990s were forced to introduce democratic reforms as conditionality for financial assistance from the western governments.
He said countries like the USA, Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Canada, Norway and Sweden insisted that African countries who were recipients of their financial aid embark on democratic reforms or forfeit their support.  Continued…  Â
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