On September 18, 2025, the streets of Antananarivo, Madagascar’s bustling capital, erupted in protest. What started as scattered demonstrations over daily blackouts and unreliable water supplies quickly transformed into a nationwide movement, echoing through at least eight cities within a matter of weeks. The grievances fueling this unrest were all too familiar: rolling power outages, rising prices, and taps that ran dry far too often. But beneath these immediate triggers lay a deeper, festering disillusionment with President Andry Rajoelina’s rule—a sense that the social contract binding the Malagasy people to their leaders had all but unraveled.
By September 29, the mounting pressure forced President Rajoelina to dissolve his government, a dramatic move that signaled just how seriously the administration viewed the crisis. Yet, as reported by 360info™, this gesture did little to calm the storm. For Madagascar’s youth, especially those organizing under the banner of Gen Z Madagascar, the message was clear: this was about more than just utility bills or intermittent services. It was about dignity, voice, and the right to a future worth living for.
Gen Z Madagascar—born and bred in the digital age—quickly became the face of the uprising. Their movement, orchestrated through Telegram, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), was anything but traditional. Drawing inspiration from global protest culture, they adopted symbols like the pirate flag from One Piece and rallied behind the slogan “We Want to Live.” Yet, as Mattia Fumagalli of the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan observed, these were not mere imitations. Instead, they reflected how a digitally native generation, raised amid inequality and political fatigue, reimagined what protest could look like—infusing it with humor, creativity, and a profound sense of moral urgency.
Unlike the hierarchical political parties of old, Gen Z Madagascar’s approach was horizontal, spontaneous, and decentralized. Their language—memes, hashtags, and punchy short videos—made politics not just accessible, but emotional. What began as virtual frustration soon spilled onto the streets, mobilizing thousands in a way that felt both intensely local and unmistakably global.
This new wave of activism is hardly unique to Madagascar. Across the Global South, from Jakarta to Lagos, Gen Z movements are rising, united by a shared awareness of global injustice but grounded in the specifics of their own communities. In Madagascar, the complaints are concrete—corruption, unemployment, failing infrastructure—but the form of resistance is strikingly transnational. The 2025 uprising marks the first major protest led by citizens who came of age after the 2009 crisis, shaped by smartphones, migration, and the ever-looming threat of climate change. Their demands—electricity, education, accountability—are pragmatic, but they carry the weight of history: the desire to break free from cycles of dependency and decay that have long haunted the island nation.
Madagascar’s political history is punctuated by mass mobilizations. The years 1972, 1991, 2002, and 2009 all saw popular uprisings that toppled governments or forced regime change. Each wave was driven by a different coalition—students, civil servants, religious groups—but the underlying pattern remained: when institutions lose legitimacy, the people take to the streets. The 2025 movement fits neatly into this lineage, yet it also marks a generational break. For the first time, the protest is led by a constituency that organizes, communicates, and dreams of the future in fundamentally new ways.
The paradox of Madagascar is hard to ignore. Despite its immense biodiversity and mineral wealth, the country remains one of the poorest on earth. Chronic underinvestment in energy and water infrastructure has left urban centers like Antananarivo grappling with daily blackouts, while rural areas are nearly disconnected from the grid. According to 360info™, three-quarters of the population live below the poverty line—a staggering statistic that underscores just how deeply the crisis runs. For young Malagasy citizens, the anger is both material and moral, linking environmental scarcity to social inequality and making it clear that climate adaptation, governance, and democracy are now inseparable issues for the island.
International reactions have framed the uprising within a broader moral context. The United Nations condemned the use of excessive force against protesters, while Pope Leo XIV called for "social harmony through justice and the common good." Religion, long a cornerstone of civic protest in Madagascar, continues to provide the moral vocabulary for dissent. Yet today, that language has merged with the digital idiom of Gen Z, resulting in a call for justice that is less theological and more social—a demand for inclusion in a state that many perceive as absent.
The echoes of this generational uprising are not limited to Madagascar. On October 21, 2025, in Kathmandu, Nepal, injured protesters from the Gen Z Movement took their demands directly to Prime Minister Sushila Karki. According to English OnlineKhabar, the group submitted a five-point demand that included action against those responsible for opening fire during the protests, constitutional amendments, protection for the movement, and a thorough investigation into corruption. As Rupin Khadka, one of the protesters, explained, "We have urged the government to address our five-point demands." The group even issued an ultimatum, pressing the government to act swiftly.
Prime Minister Karki responded with a mix of reassurance and resolve. "We will not go beyond the essence of the Gen Z Movement. We will act lawfully and within due process. We will move forward in line with the mandate given to us," she stated, promising that elections would be held on schedule and that investigations into corruption were already progressing at a fast pace. She encouraged the activists to keep speaking up, saying, "Don’t stop speaking up. Don’t stop mounting pressure on us. You’ll see results soon."
These developments underscore a crucial shift: across continents, Gen Z is leveraging digital tools and moral language to reshape the landscape of protest. Their movements are not just about immediate grievances, but about reimagining the relationship between citizens and the state. In Madagascar, whether the 2025 uprising becomes another chapter in a long history of unrest—or the beginning of genuine renewal—remains to be seen. The government’s attempts at repression and curfews may silence the streets for now, but the aspirations of a new generation are harder to contain.
What began with blackouts and empty taps has become a rallying cry for dignity and the right, as protesters chant, to live. The world is watching to see whether this digital generation can turn discontent into meaningful reform, or whether their hopes will join the archive of broken dreams that shadows Malagasy politics. Either way, a generational boundary has been crossed, and the future of protest in Africa’s island state—and beyond—will never look quite the same.
