Gen Z Against the State: Democracy in Crisis in Madagascar

Executive summary

The Gen Z–led uprising in Madagascar in 2025 marks a significant moment for democratic governance in Africa and across Small Island Developing States (SIDs). Sparked by chronic electricity and water shortages, economic precarity, and a widely discredited electoral process, the mobilisation reflected a deeper collapse of domestic political legitimacy rather than a sudden political rupture. For young Malagasy, governance failures were experienced as matters of dignity, survival, and existential security, transforming everyday infrastructure into a catalyst for collective action. The 2025 uprising illustrates how Gen Z mobilisation, rooted in lived experience and sustained through digital, cultural, and emotional infrastructures, can rapidly dismantle entrenched power. Digital platforms enabled coordination, narrative control, and transnational solidarity, while cultural expression reframed protest as collective care and defiance rather than episodic confrontation. Climate vulnerability, geographic isolation, and dependence on external actors magnified governance failures and limited exit options for youth, making protest a strategy of necessity. Nevertheless, the uprising did not resolve structural questions surrounding civilian oversight, institutional accountability, or the role of the military in political transitions. Madagascar’s experience thus underscores a broader dilemma facing youth-led movements in fragile democratic contexts: political disruption does not automatically translate into durable democratic transformation.