🔒 Africa rising: Young people are fighting back everywhere – The Wall Street Journal

“We have to recognise that we have a demographic challenge,” Zimbabwean Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as his president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, rushed home and sought to distance himself from a deadly crackdown on protesters. “We have to be careful about how we manage these transitions.”

With a median age of 19, Africa is the world’s youngest continent. It is also one of the most rapidly urbanising regions, with millions abandoning subsistence farming for megacities such as Kinshasa, Congo, or Lagos, Nigeria. Many of them end up in sprawling shantytowns, where they are less bound by restrictions on political expression sometimes imposed by ethnic or other traditional leaders in rural areas.

Crucially, these young men and women are arriving at a time when their countries are significantly poorer than Asian or Latin American nations when they reached similarly high levels of urbanisation. The result is a dire lack of jobs and government services – such as clean water, electricity and health care – that poses a contrast with the often-swanky lifestyles of the continent’s ageing ruling class.

Frustration over poor living conditions and lack of opportunities has been the chorus accompanying the current anti-regime backlash.

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Similar to the anger over fuel prices in Zimbabwe, the protests in Sudan were ignited by the cash-strapped government’s decision to cut subsidies for wheat, leading the price of bread to triple at the end of December. They have since swelled into a multi-city uprising against 75-year-old President Omar al-Bashir, in power since a 1989 coup.

Gabon’s failed coup plotters accused President Ali Bongo, 59, whose family has ruled the resource-dependent country since 1967, of being unable to govern effectively because of a recent stroke.

Apart from Mr. Kabila, who many observers believe will try to retain significant sway over Congo’s politics and military, none of the leaders under attack look ready to leave office. Instead, they have responded with repression, most notably in Sudan and Zimbabwe, where security forces have killed and tortured multiple protesters and raided hospitals caring for the wounded. In all four cases, authorities turned off the internet in an attempt to stop unwanted messages from spreading.

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In places where longstanding leaders have been removed in recent years, it was often because of a recognition within ruling parties that something had to give. The results have been mixed.

In a surprise move in Angola, President Joao Lourenco targeted family members of his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos, in an anticorruption drive, raising some hopes for a more accountable government in the southern African oil-dependent economy. Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has rushed to open up the country’s one-party system and make peace with neighbouring Eritrea, ending a two-decade conflict.

Mr. Mnagangwa’s promises of a “New Zimbabwe” following the ouster of longtime strongman Robert Mugabe, meanwhile, have fallen flat amid the brutal crackdown that followed July elections and the January strike over the government’s decision to more than double fuel prices.

What is clear is that the trends underlying the recent upheaval are only going to quicken. Research from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation projects that by 2050, 86% of the world’s extreme poor will be living in sub-Saharan Africa – more than half of them in Nigeria and Congo.

While recent advances in education in many African countries may bring down fertility rates, they are heightening expectations for a better quality of life, as well as people’s ability to circumvent government suppression. Protesters in Zimbabwe, Sudan and Congo are using virtual private networks to access social media during internet shutdowns.

“The gap between young people’s expectations and their lived experiences is widening every day,” said Ken Opalo, assistant professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. “I don’t think most African leaders are prepared for that.”

—Deborah Ball in Davos, Switzerland, contributed to this article.

Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected]