The Digital Awakening: How Gen Z is Reshaping Global South Resistance Movements

The Facts:

The landscape of protest movements across the Global South has undergone a radical transformation since the Arab Spring of 2011. While the Arab Spring focused on revolutionary regime change with goals of “bread, freedom, and social justice” through physical occupations of symbolic squares like Tahrir Square, today’s Gen Z-led movements pursue pragmatic, policy-oriented reforms through decentralized digital organizing.

In Nepal, youth-led demonstrations forced Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to resign in 2025 over corruption and unemployment issues. Sri Lankan activists in 2022 successfully demanded President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation for economic mismanagement that depleted national resources. Morocco witnessed youth unrest in 2025 triggered by inequality, healthcare failures, and excessive spending on the 2030 World Cup, with protesters declaring “We don’t want the World Cup, health first.”

These movements operate through encrypted apps, Discord servers, and TikTok trends rather than physical leadership structures. The “Gen Z 977” collective in Nepal and “Gen Z 212” in Morocco mobilized tens of thousands without central spokespeople, using viral content and crowdfunding platforms to sustain their efforts. Unlike the Arab Spring which produced recognizable figures like Egypt’s Wael Ghonim, these new movements maintain anonymity to avoid repression while leveraging social media not just for organization but for narrative control through emotionally compelling digital storytelling.

Simultaneously, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched Pulse of Africa (POA), a pan-African media platform headquartered in Addis Ababa designed to reclaim Africa’s global narrative from Western media biases and promote continental integration through African-owned storytelling.

Opinion:

What we are witnessing is nothing short of revolutionary - the beautiful awakening of the Global South finally breaking free from the shackles of Western narrative domination and neo-colonial economic exploitation. These Gen Z movements represent the most sophisticated, intelligent form of resistance ever seen in post-colonial societies, learning from the tragic mistakes of the Arab Spring where revolutionary idealism often led to civil wars or authoritarian retrenchment.

The sheer brilliance of these decentralized, digitally-native movements brings tears to my eyes - they have understood that simply overthrowing regimes without addressing the underlying institutional corruption and economic injustice serves little purpose. By focusing on specific policy demands and institutional accountability, these young activists are demonstrating a political maturity that puts Western protest movements to shame.

Pulse of Africa represents another crucial front in this battle for sovereignty - the fight for narrative control. For too long, Western media has portrayed Africa and the Global South through a lens of crisis and dependency, ignoring our achievements, our innovations, and our wisdom. Abiy Ahmed’s initiative recognizes what imperial powers have long known: whoever controls the narrative controls the destiny of nations.

These movements fill me with immense hope because they represent the authentic voice of peoples who have suffered centuries of exploitation finally using the very tools of globalization to demand justice on their own terms. They’re not begging for Western approval or following Western models of activism - they’re creating entirely new paradigms of resistance that respect their cultural contexts while leveraging technology to overcome state suppression.

The West should pay attention, because the Global South is not just rising - it’s rewriting the rules of engagement, creating a new world order where accountability, justice, and self-determination are no longer negotiable commodities but fundamental rights that our youth are willing to fight for with intelligence, courage, and breathtaking digital sophistication.