In recent times, Kenya in Africa, has witnessed a powerful awakening of the Kenyan youth who leveraged social media to mobilise against a finance bill which proposed a raft of tax hikes.
“The biggest mobilisers of the protest were the Gen Zs. They were on TikTok, Instagram and on X. The majority of the people in the streets were young people,” Boniface Mwangi, a Kenyan activist, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“For the first time in history, Kenyans were united for one purpose, to defeat the finance bill,” he said. “It was us waking up to the power we have and becoming active citizens to demand accountability and meaningful change in our country.”
The nationwide protests forced President William Ruto to make a historic U-turn by scrapping his reviled law, sacking cabinet ministers and pledging a slate of measures to cut wasteful spending of public funds.
Wave Of Youth-Led Protests
Africa, home to the world’s youngest population, has seen a wave of youth-led protests fuelled by frustrations over rampant corruption, poor governance, high living costs and rising unemployment.
Gen Z and millennials protested in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria and Mozambique in 2024, and some analysts expect this activism to intensify in 2025 as grievances persist.
Murithi Mutiga, program director for Africa for the International Crisis Group, said frustrations partly arise from Africa’s struggle to recover from economic shocks like COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, which has driven up food and fuel prices.
There is also growing resentment among a generation increasingly aware of its rights, empowered by the internet to take action for change, said Mutiga.
“I think it’s possible that you’ll see more protests in 2025,” Mutiga said.
Youth Disillusionment
Africa has the fastest growing, youngest population of any continent, with 70% of sub-Saharan Africa’s people under the age of 30.
Fueling their growing wave of disillusionment are scarce job opportunities. Some 53 million youth – more than one in five – in sub-Saharan Africa are not engaged in any form of employment, education or training, says the U.N.’s International Labour Organization.
A 2024 survey of African youth found three-quarters of respondents said it was difficult to find a job, and two-thirds were dissatisfied with their governments’ efforts to create employment opportunities.
“Most are dissatisfied with efforts to tackle corruption and there is widespread support for a range of policies to address it,” the Africa Youth Survey said.
Aslak Orre, a senior researcher at Chr. Michelsen Institute, a development research institute based in Norway, said young people across the region were exasperated with poor economic growth, few jobs, high public debt and austerity measures.
“And for that, they blame the politicians from a different generation, who they see as working for themselves rather than the public good,” Orre said.
In Mozambique, a disputed October election that extended the Frelimo party’s 49-year rule sparked more than three months of protests against corruption, living costs and unemployment.
In Ghana, ahead of Dec. 7 presidential and parliamentary elections, young people mounted street protests against the nation’s debt crisis and high inflation, which have triggered the worst economic crisis in a generation.
Activists noted that the protests across Africa had particularly significant impact because young people can skillfully wield digital activism.
In Mozambique, Ângelo do Rosário, who is known as Maxh on social media, said he used his 1.2 million Facebook and more than 300,000 TikTok, Instagram and YouTube followers respectively to encourage young Mozambicans to demand their rights.
“(We demand) quality education in Mozambique, the availability of a decent health service and all of this the people believe is the result of the bad governance we have in Mozambique,” said Rosário.
Police Killings, Abductions
The protests across the continent have not been without consequence.
Hundreds of young people have been detained or killed in clashes with police, and scores of protesters remain missing.
In Kenya, some prominent rights groups have accused authorities of a cover-up of dozens of alleged police killings, unexplained abductions and illegal detentions related to the Gen Z protests.
Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights, a government-funded body, recorded 82 cases of enforced disappearances in the period between the protests, from June and December. Of those, 29 people remain unaccounted for. At least 40 people have been killed.
In Mozambique, at least 278 people have been killed in police crackdowns against protesters, and more than 2,000 families have fled and sought refuge in neighbouring Malawi.
In November, Nigeria charged 76 people, including children, with treason and inciting a military coup after deadly August protests erupted against economic hardship and spiralling inflation.
Nigerian activist Rinu Oduala – one of the organisers of prominent #EndSARS protests against police brutality in 2020 – warned that youth uprisings are unlikely to die down anytime soon.
(With inputs from Reuters)
