Media Citation
Africa’s protests span countries, classes and causes | The Economist
Source: The Economist | 9 April 2026
[...] The street has long been a feature of African politics. Adam Branch, of Cambridge University, and Zachariah Mampilly, of the City University of New York, identify a wave of anti-colonial protest in the 1940s and 1950s, and another against austerity and one-party rule in the 1980s and 1990s. A third wave of protest against economic hardship and elite capture began in the late 2000s and continues today. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a monitoring group, reckons that the number of African protests has held steady since the start of the decade, at about 12,000 a year.
