Since 2011, sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed an unprecedented wave of protests. Both the rise in protests and their variation across the continent beg for an explanation. This report, based on a review of the literature, data sets, and some recent case studies from Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC), Kenya, and Zimbabwe, surveys and organizes existing knowledge on the following questions:
- What are the broad motivations and grievances that protesters invoke?
- What explains the timing of protests? Particularly, what specific triggers get people
in the street? - Who protests?
- What explains variations in the use of violence in protests and in their size?
- What conditions, such as the willingness of regimes to use repression, favor or
inhibit protests? - What are the outcomes of protests and do they prevent democratic backsliding?
- What are the implications of the study’s findings for USAID’s work?