Youth uprisings in Madagascar seem to have been hijacked, while those in Morocco have been deflated.
The Gen Z protests that swept across Morocco over the past few weeks – as they have gripped other countries like Madagascar and Nepal – seem to have subsided. Whether that is the end, though, is not clear.
Gen Z 212, the specific manifestation in Morocco, along with Morocco Youth Voice, launched its street demonstrations on 27 September in the capital Rabat and other cities. Demands included better health and education, and an end to government corruption and spending on ostentatious sports events like the 2030 FIFA World Cup and 2025 Africa Cup of Nations rather than on public services.
Over the next few weeks, the protests grew and spread, with police arresting hundreds and killing some demonstrators. The marches grew more violent and destructive, showing signs of gaining their own momentum and slipping beyond the organisers’ control. Gen Z 212 is an anonymous and rather amorphous entity, so control was always going to be a problem.
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The uprisings started in the context of high youth unemployment, officially calculated at 35.8%, and inequality. But it also appears that there was a copycat effect as Gen Z participants in different countries fed off each other, and coordinated actions through social media.
The spark seemed to have been the death of eight women during childbirth in a public hospital in the southern coastal city of Agadir. This inspired particularly the protests about poor health services. According to the World Health Organization, Morocco has only 7.7 doctors per 10 000 people, with some regions such as Agadir registering 4.4 per 10 000, well below the recommended 25.
The demonstrations continued to proliferate over the next two weeks, with the killing of several protesters seemingly provoking the demonstrators to greater violence. Banks, police stations and other government buildings were torched and otherwise damaged, though criminals using the cover of protests might have been responsible for some or even most of those.
A turning point was reached in the second week of October after King Mohammed VI’s speech at the opening of Parliament. Without mentioning Gen Z 212 or the uprisings, he urged the government to improve healthcare and education. The monarchy is widely respected in Morocco, and the king’s remarks were read as an implicit recognition of the legitimacy of the protesters’ social demands.
After his speech, the Gen Z 212 organisers posted calls for another mass demonstration across the country on 18 October. ‘But no one really [showed up],’ Francois Conradie, a Morocco-based economist at Oxford Economics, told ISS Today.
Meanwhile, the government did respond to the king’s appeal. The finance minister’s 2026 budget presentation to Parliament this week included a 16% increase in spending on health and education. This seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the protests, Conradie said.
Now, even though the campaign has not officially ended, ‘a lot of energy seems to have gone out of it,’ he says. He sees this as the result of a combination of harsh policing and the government’s tactical response to the demonstrators, which involves conceding to their most obvious demands.
Whether Gen Z 212 can regain its momentum is now the question. Conradie points out that there is still a lot of pent-up energy in the movement that could drive further demonstrations. He notes that much of the uprising’s force came from teenagers just out of school who had fewer job prospects and less likelihood of benefitting from educational reforms the government might propose.
And even if the government has to some degree responded to the Gen Z 212 demands for better health and education, it has not addressed the demand that Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch be fired and corrupt officials be prosecuted.
And so Riccardo Fabiani, North African Director at the International Crisis Group, told ISS Today that ‘it’s clear that it’s hard to sustain a mobilisation for weeks without a proper socio-political infrastructure behind (political parties, trade unions, civil society, etc.).’
‘At the moment, the demonstrators are taking a pause to reorganise, but keeping up the momentum will not be easy given that the authorities are trying to address their concerns without legitimising them or entering a formal dialogue. Moreover, the political dimension of their requests (dismissing the government, dissolving corrupt parties) has been completely ignored.
‘So I feel that the challenge for the protesters will be how to avoid losing momentum while the system refuses to acknowledge the movement and, at the same time, it tries to address the issues at stake indirectly. This is not that different from the 2011 playbook, when the monarchy introduced some limited changes and gradually undermined the protest movement.’
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In this analysis, Fabiani appears to have identified structural issues that may be common to all Gen Z movements. In Madagascar, Gen Z also protested about poor government service delivery, with a focus on water and electricity. The uprisings culminated in former president Andry Rajoelina fleeing the country last week.
The military then stepped in, and last Friday Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as president. This week he appointed unpopular businessman Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo as prime minister, to the chagrin of the Gen Z organisers, who said this ‘runs contrary to the spirit of change and renewal.’ They complained that they had not been consulted and vowed to keep mobilising.
‘Our revolution will not be hijacked,’ they said. But that seems to be what has happened. While in Morocco, the revolution appears to have been deflated.
Peter Fabricius, Consultant, ISS Pretoria
Read the original article on ISS.
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