Frustrated Gen Z threatens to topple African governments

First Kenya, then Madagascar and now Morocco. A wave of protests under the banner of Gen Z has swept through parts of Africa.

Demonstrators have stormed parliament buildings. Security forces have killed and injured hundreds, and in Madagascar the president fell from power Tuesday.

Each protest has had specific causes, but under the surface each reflects the failure of elected governments to provide economic opportunities for young people across a continent with the youngest population in the world, according to protesters and analysts.

The frustration among young people poses a challenge to governments beyond where Generation Z protests have taken place, not least because of the continent’s young demographic. Africa’s median age is 19, which means that young people are entering the workplace and becoming politically active in large numbers.

Young voters in Botswana last year helped defeat the party that had ruled since independence, while in South Africa discontent among young people with the economic performance of the African National Congress helped cause its vote share to fall below 50 per cent for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.

“Young people want some form of prosperity, they want some form of hope and they are not seeing that,” said Ndongo Sylla, a Senegalese economist and author. The attempts by security forces to repress the protests suggest that governments lacked clear answers, he added.

In one measure of the limited economic opportunities in Africa, the vast majority of new jobs on the continent are in the informal sector, according to the African Development Bank.

Young people often lead demands for change and analysts argue that, while social media makes these protests distinct, it does not constitute a fundamental difference.

But social media has made it easier for Gen Z, the demographic cohort born roughly between 1997 and 2012, to outfox the authorities by orchestrating demonstrations on the fly without high-profile leadership.

At the same time, political demands have often shifted and become more ambitious over time, which has kept governments off-balance in the face of the protests.

Kenya, where global Gen Z protests broke out last year, is a case in point. Young people marched through the capital, Nairobi, and other cities to protest a finance bill introduced by the government of President William Ruto that they said would raise prices. Behind that lay an array of grievances, including spiraling debt, corruption, rising prices and youth unemployment.

In a significant victory, the president withdrew the bill in June last year, the day after some protesters stormed parts of parliament and more than 60 people had died, largely as a result of police fire. The protests resumed in June on the anniversary of the largest demonstrations, with calls for the president to resign, and at least eight others were killed.

“The systemic change that everybody wants has not happened,” said Nelson Amenya, a student activist. Amenya’s role as a whistleblower over a proposed deal by the government to overhaul the capital’s main airport last year helped fuel the protests in Kenya.

In recent weeks there have also been protests in Indonesia and Nepal, where the government fell, while President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar was forced to dissolve his government in an attempt to quell protests.

The protesters had demanded that he step down for his failure to deliver basic services, including electricity and water. Many young people were not appeased.

“Firing the government is not a solution. The real problem hasn’t been uprooted,” said Rakoarivao Andritiana Kevin, 20, a law student at the University of Ankatso in the capital, Antananarivo, arguing that Rajoelina should resign.

Rajoelina has since gone into hiding and was impeached by parliament on Tuesday.

The demonstrations that erupted in Morocco in recent weeks were driven by anger over spending on infrastructure before this year’s Africa Cup of Nations football tournament and the 2030 World Cup. Three people were killed. The protests, organised by a group known as Gen Z 212, used social media to call for better schools as well as hospitals and broader freedoms.

“Promises have not been kept and the credibility of the country’s political elite has suffered as a result,” said Aboubakr Jamai, dean of the Madrid center at the American College of the Mediterranean.

The success of the demonstrations in Madagascar and Nepal, which have prompted changes of government, has forced activists in Kenya to reflect on their lack of progress.

“I’ve been looking at them with green eyes, with jealousy, because they are literally getting what they want,” said Lee Makenna Jelani, who has supported Kenya’s protests and organised a dialogue on social media to discuss what lessons could be learned.

But others in Kenya said they have been inspired by what they see as a movement that has spread across the continent and beyond.

Hanifa Adan, 29, who played a prominent role in rallying the demonstrations last year and was briefly detained, said she had followed the other protests avidly.

“We are validating each other. We are inspiring each other,” she said. “We borrow courage from each other.”