Loaded for Bear: Social unrest and mass protests rise ‘exponentially' across Africa

Daily Maverick

06-05-2025

When viewed through a continent-wide prism, the service delivery protest phenomenon in South Africa is clearly not just a local development, but a reflection of wider regional trends and simmering discontent across Africa with economic stagnation and state failure.
Fed up with corrupt elites, widening inequality, political repression and withering economic opportunities, Africans are taking to the streets in unprecedented waves of protest.
'Social unrest is on the rise across the continent,' the World Bank says in its latest Africa's Pulse report, a bi-annual assessment of developments on the world's poorest continent.
'Although most have been peaceful, there has been an exponential increase in mass demonstrations over the past 20 years. The increase in protests has accelerated since the early 2010s, increasing by 12% on average each year over a decade.'
'Service delivery protests' erupted in South Africa two decades ago and the term has, like 'load shedding', become embedded in the country's vocabulary.
When viewed through this continent-wide prism, the service delivery protest phenomenon in South Africa is clearly not just a local development, but a reflection of wider regional trends and simmering discontent across Africa with economic stagnation and state failure.
'While protests tend to be highly localised events, they are all triggered to some extent by citizens' dissatisfaction with their livelihoods, including the cost of living, job opportunities and access to public services,' the World Bank notes.
'Protesters regularly attribute their lack of opportunities to the government's failure to manage the economy and its corruption and inability to deliver on its distributive mandate. In 2024, youth protests in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda highlighted corruption as a major grievance, and protesters in Ghana and Nigeria focused on poor economic management and fiscal decisions that they perceived as unfair.'
Where there is smoke…
Where there is smoke, there is fire and these blazes, fanned by the winds of discontent, are mirroring recent wildfires stoked by climate change in their size and intensity.
'Particularly large and enduring events have occurred across the continent since 2019… Protests have arisen across levels of economic development, political regime types and countries, including in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan. In 2024, there were 7,224 demonstrations in the region, comprising 5,911 protests and 1,313 riots, compared to 2,780 a decade earlier,' the report says.
Mobile phones and social media have obviously been key drivers of protests, especially among Africa's swelling youth demographic – sometimes with positive outcomes.
'The #EndSARS protest in Nigeria called for the dissolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which was notorious for police brutality, and led to its effective disbanding,' the report says.
That was a victory for civil society and accountability.
But outright repression and onerous regulation are constraints on social media in several African countries – and digital access is extremely limited in many places.
Another key driver of protest in Africa is the region's explosive demographic situation. The region's population is simply growing too fast for new entrants to be absorbed into the labour market.
'The fast growth of the working-age population, averaging 3% annually since the late 2000s, has not been met with matching levels of job growth. Moreover, it is expected that the youth population (ages 15 to 34) will nearly double, from 499 million in 2024 to 846 million by 2050,' the report says.
There is a vicious cycle at work here.
'The link between economic grievance and political stability runs both ways: poor economic opportunity exacerbates political discontent, while the risk of conflict and violence can severely undermine economic activity and investment. Annual growth in countries in conflict is about 2.5 percentage points lower on average, with the impact on per capita GDP increasing over the duration of the conflict,' the report says.
This is a wake-up call for African governments – protesters are demanding accountability as seen in the flare-ups after last year's bitterly-contested election in Mozambique, where the ruling Frelimo Party seems incapable of relinquishing its grip on power ahead of an expected windfall from offshore gas projects.
Things have clearly reached a boiling point. The report notes that there has been no significant decline in inequality in Africa since 2000, and the blessings of economic growth have been uneven.
While extreme poverty has declined, it is a dismal category in which almost 40% of Africans still find themselves trapped.
'It is not surprising, therefore, that income is highly concentrated at the top levels of earnings: the richest 10% in the region receive almost 56% of total income, matching some of the highest levels worldwide,' the report says.