Current History

In our annual Africa issue, Patrick Desplat contextualizes the Generation Z revolt that toppled the government of Madagascar in 2025. “What initially sparked the protests in Madagascar was neither an abstract political program nor global symbolism,” writes Desplat, a scientific coordinator at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology. Rather, “everyday concerns” sparked mass discontent, as unreliable infrastructure made Internet-reliant (and mostly informal) livelihoods nearly impossible to maintain. The protest movement’s detachment from institutional politics distinguished it from previous political upheavals in Madagascar. “Without durable pathways into formal decision-making,” though, it risks following the pattern of failing to create a responsive government and democratize opportunity.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/167/217950/Gen-Z-Aspiration-Hybrid-Agency-and-the-Madagascar

Desplat’s essay, “Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising The 2025 youth uprising in Madagascar was a Gen Z–led movement sparked by chronic infrastructure failures and deepening economic precarity. Young Malagasy mobilized digital culture and global symbols to articulate local grievances and coordinate a generational protest. This mobilization represente...

Current History’s May 2026 issue, the annual Africa issue, is now available in print and on our website at https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The issue features the following essays:

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising
Patrick Desplat (Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology)
Provoked by failing infrastructure and economic despair, youth-led protests helped to topple Madagascar’s president in 2025, yet the movement was excluded from power.

The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy
Moses Khisa (North Carolina State University)
Elections and high-profile opposition create an illusion of democracy in Uganda, as President Yoweri Museveni has only become more intolerant of challengers over four decades.

Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon
Basile Ndjio (University of Douala)
Since the colonial era, Cameroon’s sexual minorities have been treated as deviant subjects. Under the postcolonial state, criminalization is reinforced by broader forms of exclusion.

Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique
Justin Pearce (Stellenbosch University)
Through long civil wars, insurgencies, and recent protests, the main ruling and opposition parties have remained the same since both Angola and Mozambique won their freedom from Portugal.

The Expanding Sahel Coup Belt
John J. Chin (Carnegie Mellon University)
A band of countries stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea have experienced military takeovers in the past several years. Common causes include poverty, terrorism, and shifting alliances.

PERSPECTIVE
Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament
Ebenezer Obadare (Council on Foreign Relations)
Although elections are regularly held across the region, popular discontent over inequality and impunity has fueled an African backlash against liberal democracy.

BOOKS
The Early Modern World of a West African Woman
Jody Benjamin (Howard University)
The life of a local merchant who fell afoul of the Inquisition shows how colonialism and the slave trade altered everyday lives in a cosmopolitan port town on the Atlantic coast.

Volume 125 Issue 871 | Current History | University of California Press Current History | 125 | 871 | May 2026

In our annual South Asia issue, Šumit Ganguly reviews a new book by Srinath Raghavan on Indira Gandhi’s years in power in India. Ganguly, director of the Huntington Program on Strengthening US–India Relations at the Hoover Institution, says that India’s politics continue to be shaped by the late prime minister’s decisions “and the concomitant forces that she set in motion, both for good and ill.” Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency, which lasted from 1975 to 1977 and fell hardest on the poor and minorities, remains at the heart of her legacy. She also initiated economic reforms that began to liberalize the statist economy. Her populist tendencies and use of strong executive authority, undermining institutional checks, have had echoes in the tenure of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/161/217736/What-the-Emergency-Wrought

Ganguly’s review is available along with the rest of our April issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

What the Emergency Wrought A new book illuminates the lasting consequences of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of a 21-month state of emergency in the mid-1970s, running roughshod over democratic institutions and norms cultivated by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru.