Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Youth-led protests roil Morocco and Madagascar, Cameroonians prepare to head to the polls as President Paul Biya seeks an eighth term, and U.S.-South Africa tensions continue to ramp up.
Will Youth-Led Protests in Africa Spread?
Weekslong protests continue to roil Morocco and Madagascar as young people disillusioned with ruling elites take to the streets. The unrest comes amid a global wave of Gen Z-led unrest this year in Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, and the Philippines.
In Morocco, demonstrations have spread to more than a dozen cities, marking the country’s most expansive unrest since the 2011 Arab Spring. Moroccans accuse their government of neglecting public services while investing $5 billion in infrastructure for the 2030 FIFA World Cup, which Morocco is co-hosting with Portugal and Spain.
Under the banner “GenZ 212”—named after Morocco’s telephone country code—protesters are calling on King Mohammed VI to dismiss the government, investigate corruption, and improve job access.
Protests began last month after several women died following C-section operations at a hospital in the southwestern city of Agadir, which many Moroccans saw as emblematic of the country’s inadequate health care system. This frustration has morphed into wider anger about the economy and lack of employment opportunities.
Over the last decade, Morocco’s working-age population has increased by more than 10 percent, while employment has increased by only 1.5 percent, according to the World Bank. Youth unemployment in Morocco reached nearly 40 percent last year.
The lack of job creation is a growing problem across Africa. Only 24 percent of the region’s jobs are salaried, according to a World Bank report released this week. In a Afrobarometer survey conducted in February 2024, more than half of Moroccans age 35 and under said they had considered emigrating for work.
So far, three people were killed by police forces after demonstrators allegedly stormed a security post, and more than 1,000 have been arrested.
The government has attempted to de-escalate the situation, announcing the appointment of more than 500 doctors. But Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch—who comes from one of Morocco’s wealthiest families, with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion—has not shown any indication that he intends to resign.
Elsewhere in Africa, Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina has ignored similar calls to step down and instead said he was dissolving the government last week. Madagascar’s unrest escalated following the killing of at least 22 people in protests that began on Sept. 25 against repeated power cuts and water shortages.
Two-thirds of Madagascar’s population lives in extreme poverty. The country, which produces 80 percent of the world’s vanilla, faces high U.S. tariffs under the Trump administration. And the end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allowed the country duty-free access to the U.S. market, has put around 120,000 jobs in Madagascar at risk.
On Monday, Rajoelina appointed Gen. Ruphin Fortunat Zafisambo as his new prime minister in what many Malagasy people see as an attempt to cling onto power through military support.
“The appointment of a high-ranking soldier has often been a choice of Malagasy leaders in times of political tension, in order to project this image of firmness but also to court the armed forces,” the Madagascar Tribune reported. A national dialogue slated to take place on Wednesday was rejected by protesters, who have given Rajoelina 48 hours to resign or face a nationwide strike.
Prolonged unrest in Morocco and Madagascar could spur additional Gen Z demonstrations in other African countries. “[E]conomic frustrations, such as unemployment and a rising cost of living, are similarly felt” elsewhere on the continent, risk management firm Solace Global warned last week.
Meanwhile, Pangea-Risk has noted that Uganda could also see unrest as 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni plans to run for a seventh term in January.
The Week Ahead
Wednesday, Oct. 8: The Africa Fintech Summit begins in Accra, Ghana.
Thursday, Oct. 9, to Saturday, Oct. 11: Seychelles holds a presidential election runoff.
Friday, Oct. 10: South Africa hosts G-20 trade ministers.
Sunday, Oct. 12: Cameroon holds a presidential election.
What We’re Watching
Cameroonian elections. Paul Biya, Cameroon’s 92-year-old president, is running for an eighth term in elections on Sunday despite public opposition to his rule. Biya largely controls the army and appoints most officials in the country’s electoral body, which prevents opponents from challenging his government.
In August, Cameroon’s Constitutional Council upheld a decision by the country’s electoral body to exclude Biya’s strongest rival, 71-year-old Maurice Kamto, from the ballot, saying that his party also supported a second candidate. (Kamto called the ruling “arbitrary.”) Kamto was the runner-up in the last presidential election in 2018, when he received 14 percent of the vote.
Biya took office in 1982. He faced early challenges to his rule, including a 1984 coup attempt, and won by only a small margin—with just 40 percent of the vote—in 1992, the first election to feature candidates other than himself. Since then, he has won every subsequent election by a landslide, with at least 70 percent of the vote. These elections are widely considered rigged.
In the capital of Yaoundé, some residents have expressed discontent with Biya’s rule by removing and vandalizing campaign posters. Despite these frustrations, Biya is almost certain to win this weekend.
Russian cargo plane. South Africa reportedly permitted a Russian cargo plane sanctioned by the United States to land heavily loaded in the country last Thursday and depart later with an empty cargo hold. South African authorities insisted that the plane was carrying general cargo and civilian helicopters and that they had “no knowledge” that Washington had blacklisted the operator, Abakan Air, last year for transporting Russian military equipment.
Pretoria is under threat of U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration, which has falsely accused the South African government of committing a white genocide. This latest incident will likely further sour relations and deal a blow to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempts to strike a trade deal with Washington.
Last month, Republican Sen. John Kennedy introduced a bill seeking to review U.S. diplomatic ties with South Africa, citing Pretoria’s moves to “cozy up to Russia and China.”
Somalia prison storming. Somali government forces said they killed seven al-Shabab militants on Saturday, ending a six-hour siege at a prison in the capital of Mogadishu. In recent months, al-Shabab attacks have increased as the country’s federal government has become increasingly fragmented and territories such as Puntland and Jubaland threaten secession.
U.K. paternity case. Seven Kenyans won a case last Friday in London’s Family Court, which ruled that they are the children of British men stationed at a Kenyan army base. This marks the first time that paternity has been proved using commercially available DNA databases in a U.K. court, and the verdict has opened a path to British citizenship for the claimants.
The legal victory comes amid separate inquiries by Kenya and the U.K. Defence Ministry into allegations of sexual exploitation and rights abuses committed by British troops deployed to Kenya. Last month, a Nairobi court charged a former British soldier with the murder of a 21-year-old Kenyan woman in 2012.
This Week in Culture
Sudanese preservationists are struggling to trace an estimated 4,000 ancient artifacts taken during large-scale looting amid Sudan’s ongoing civil war.
In June 2023, fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) raided the National Museum in Khartoum; at least one antiquity was subsequently listed on eBay for $200. Most of the stolen items date back to the ancient Nubian Kingdom of Kush, established around 800 B.C.
“Only the large, heavy objects that couldn’t be carried off were left behind,” Rawda Idris, a member of Sudan’s Committee for the Protection of Museums and Archeological Sites, told AFP. Looters may have smuggled some artifacts into neighboring Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan.
Meanwhile, fighting in the country has continued, with little prospect of peace. At least 91 civilians were killed in a 10-day period last month during the RSF’s offensive in the city of el-Fasher, according to the United Nations. More than 260,000 people may be trapped in the city, which has been under siege by the RSF for more than a year, without adequate access to food and water. The conflict has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced around 14 million.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Trump’s Speech to Generals Was Incitement to Violence Against Americans by Kori Schake
- How Military Leaders Should Respond to Trump’s Norm-Busting by Peter D. Feaver and Heidi A. Urben
- How a U.S. Government Shutdown Could Impact Washington’s Foreign Policy by Rishi Iyengar
What We’re Reading
Nigeria’s rave culture. In New Lines magazine, Abioye Damilare considers the disparity between average earnings in Nigeria—nearly half of the country makes less than $32 per month—and the exorbitant fees paid in popular nightclubs in Lagos, where a bottle of tequila typically costs more than $600.
A night out at a Lagos club is a “spectacle of wealth, status and performance that revealed how Nigerian nightclubs have transformed into elaborate theaters of ostentatious spending,” Damilare writes. “With Nigeria grappling with extreme poverty rates, such manufactured exclusivity felt, to me, like a deliberate mockery of the economic realities most citizens face daily.”
South Africans mourn Charlie Kirk. In Africa Is a Country, Pontsho Pilane argues that the outpouring of grief in South Africa over far-right American influencer Charlie Kirk’s killing—a figure most had previously never heard of—reflects the influence of U.S. evangelical ministries in Africa.
“This paradox, an obscure man sparking outsized debate, speaks to the global cultural reach of American evangelical media and ideology,” Pilane writes. “The surprise is not that South Africans mourned a stranger; it is how natural it felt to some to drape his memory in reverence.”
The post What’s Behind Africa’s Sweeping Gen Z Protests appeared first on Foreign Policy.
