Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar UprisingDesplat, Patrick
doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.871.167pmid: N/A
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 represented neither a clean rupture nor a mere repetition of earlier crises, but a form of hybrid agency that is locally grounded yet expressed through transnational digital repertoires. Though the youth movement forced regime change, its horizontal structure struggled to convert protest into durable institutional reform in the context of the enduring “Malagasy paradox” of recurrent political breakdown.
The Making of Uganda’s Deepening AutocracyKhisa, Moses
doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.871.174pmid: N/A
President Yoweri Museveni, in power for four decades, has overseen a steady drift toward autocracy in Uganda. Elections have been held regularly since 1996, yet they have led not to democratization but its opposite. The ruling party uses state coercion and patronage to maintain its political dominance and demobilize the opposition. The emergence of a charismatic opposition candidate, former pop star Robert Kyagulanyi (also known as Bobi Wine), so far has not disrupted this system. After a campaign marked by intensified repression, the official result of the January 2026 elections was another victory for Museveni, with his son positioning to inherit the presidency.
Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in CameroonNdjio, Basile
doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.871.180pmid: N/A
This article examines the complex dynamics of medical discrimination and anti-LGBTIQ exclusion in Cameroon. It uses Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and Achille Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics to demonstrate how same-sex sexuality has been framed as a moral, medical, and political issue from the colonial era to the present day. Cameroonian medical institutions are not merely providers of health care, but a powerful mechanism for perpetuating medical discrimination and social exclusion of queer individuals. The article also foregrounds the various strategies through which LGBTIQ Cameroonians navigate and contest these regimes of exclusion.
Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and MozambiquePearce, Justin
doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.871.186pmid: N/A
Angola and Mozambique both celebrated fifty years of independence in 2025. The politics of each country have been marked by a fractious past. Both endured internal conflict until the 1990s, as social divisions that were a legacy of Portuguese colonial rule became politicized amid Cold War rivalries. Today, both southern African states are still under the rule of the same parties that declared independence in 1975 and cling to the vestiges of their legitimacy as liberation movements. Formal opposition politics also remains constrained by its origins in nationalist rivalry; a more credible challenge to the incumbents comes from an increasingly lively street politics.
The Expanding Sahel Coup BeltChin, John J.
doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.871.193pmid: N/A
Since 2020, the Sahel region has emerged as the global epicenter of coups d’état and terrorism. This article surveys why coups in recent years have been concentrated in a narrow belt running from Guinea-Bissau on West Africa’s Atlantic coast all the way to Sudan on the continent’s Red Sea coast. Though there is limited evidence of direct coordination or foreign sponsorship, shared causes of Africa’s latest coup wave include “traps” of repeated coup attempts, poverty, worsening terrorism, crises of democratic governance, and an international environment that has grown more favorable to post-coup regimes. Democratic renewal and domestic tranquility remain elusive within the Sahel coup belt, which threatens to keep expanding.