Popular Protest in Africa and Prospects for Political Change

"Why has Africa been left out of conversations about protests worldwide?" asked Zachariah Mampilly in a public lecture at the Center for Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery (CCNR) at the School of Public Policy on March 20. Mampilly, who is the director of Africana Studies and an associate professor of political science and international studies at Vassar College, said that since 2005 there have been popular protests in every region of Africa. Many of these protests, however, have gone unnoticed, and are often dismissed as "mere rioting."

Mampilly went on to note that there has been a long history of popular protest in Africa dating back 70 years. He identified three periods of popular protest: anti-colonial, from the 1940s until after World War II; anti-SAP (Structural Adjustment Programs) that began in the mid-1980s; and the most recent wave of protests that began in 2005.

Mampilly observed that anti-colonial protests in Africa had been successful in changing regimes but had not led to a period of democratization: up until the 1990s, there were only three democracies, out of a total of 55 countries, in all of Africa. In explaining the second wave of popular protests, Mampilly pointed to economic factors, and the harsh effects of IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs. As countries wrestled to deal with the popular protests that were triggered by the imposition of measures like currency devaluations, privatization, and the elimination of food subsidies, opposition parties emerged in some African countries. By 2007, there were 20 democracies in Africa, and an additional 40 countries had held elections. Mampilly pointed out that despite the fact that more countries in Africa were "formally free," life for vast numbers of people living in those countries had not improved.

The protests that began in many African countries around 2005 were usually a response to either electoral or economic crises. Mampilly noted that these protests took place throughout Africa. "We (Mampilly and co-author Adam Branch) understand the 2011 Arab Spring protests in a much broader context," he said. Mampilly identified a number of structural factors to explain the most recent wave of protests: a commodity boom; a youth bulge (one third of the working population in Africa is between the ages of 15 and 24); the fastest urbanization rates in the world; and a decline in manufacturing that has led to rising levels of unemployment.

Mampilly said that there were particular challenges to organizing popular protests in Africa. He pointed to the urban vs. rural divide as one example noting that it had been exacerbated during the colonial period. Another tension is between civil society, which is more formal and organized and includes unions, NGOs, and student groups; and political society, which tends to be chaotic and includes the urban poor and rural migrants. A third factor is the continuing debate between those who advocate for unarmed protests and others who support armed resistance as being the most effective tool to achieve political change. As Mampilly observed, violence in the African context has been declining since the end of the Cold War.

Mampilly went on to look at three recent examples of popular protests in Africa: the 2012 fuel protests in Nigeria; the political society-led protests in Sudan that broke out in September 2013 not in the capital Khartoum, but "in the periphery;" and Uganda's Walk to Work movement. He noted similarities and differences both among the protest movements, and also in how governments responded in Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda. Mampilly noted that outside donors, both from the west and also from China, play critical roles in supporting and/or enabling governments' often violent response to popular protests.

Looking ahead, Mampilly said that new political visions were emerging in Africa. "Ongoing protests show that African people are engaged in projects to transform society and state from within," he said.