When I left Antananarivo this past August, if you had told me President Rajoelina’s government would be gone in two months, I would have laughed you off. The poverty was a palpable presence, not just in the capital but everywhere I visited, from the bustling streets of Tana to the cooler highlands of Antsirabe where I spent most of the days. The desperation was etched onto the faces of the young people I spoke to both alongside the events I had gone to Madagascar for, but at the eating spaces that I patroned.

In conversations with few fellow Zimbabweans I have been travelling with, we dissected the poverty that we saw along the way from the airport to Tana CBD (the irony I know), the palpable sense of abandonment and resignment that the young people who spoke with us shared. Yet, in all those discussions, we collectively overlooked a crucial truth: a generation that appears politically disconnected is often the most politically aware. We saw what looked like passivity, in retrospect we can say it was just potential energy waiting for a trigger.

My initial analysis was clouded by an academic theory that I had read of a few months prior preparing a paper on urban poverty. It was a theory linked to Oscar Lewis’s concept of a “culture of poverty”, the idea that the urban poor develop a set of psychological traits like fatalism, hopelessness, and a lack of ambition to cope with their circumstances. I saw young Malagasy who were deeply dismissive of the political class. Their online lives showed them what was possible in the world, yet they saw no pathway to connect that digital dream to their lived reality. Fatalism was evident in how they described their future; ambition felt like a foreign concept. I admit, I fundamentally misread the situation.

Political awareness is a precursor to political action, but a catalyst is always needed to bridge the two. That catalyst is rarely a grand political ideology; more often, it’s a spark of raw frustration over a basic livelihood issue. In Madagascar, it was the chronic blackouts and water cuts (it wasn’t a new crisis, but it reached a tipping point.)

This brings me to a second point I misjudged: the tools of mobilisation. When we think of digital revolutions, our minds jump to the Arab Spring, to Twitter (or X, whatever) and Facebook. But the game has changed. When protests erupted in Nepal and Morocco, a different platform kept emerging: Discord.

These are not movements led by political enthusiasts or meticulously organised by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). They are born in nodes of communication where young people are simply battling through life, expressing themselves, and finding commonality in their struggle. These platforms are where emotions coalesce into action, far from the polished narratives of traditional activism.

My former boss told me seated outside our Harare office in December last year: “True liberation, like that of the 20th century, will not be earned through the work and brilliance of the college-educated middle class. It will be won by those on the street corners who seem hopeless.” I see this truth in the ghettos of Glenorah, Mbare, and Kuwadzana here in Harare, and now in hindsight I see it clearly in Madagascar and Dakar (as I have reflected last year on my return from Bangladesh)

In the coming months, a predictable script will unfold. Academics and news commentators will write extensively on what happened in Madagascar, many will claim that it was obvious all along. NGOs will host workshops in plush hotels, bundling these young people into rooms to “interrogate” them on how they did it, later writing reports on how their own programs “catalyzed” the movement. The political opposition will try to claim the victory was won in their name.

All of these versions will be, in large part, a dishonest attempt at harvesting where they did not sow.

So, what can we truly learn from the Gen Z-led protests that have now ousted leaders in Bangladesh, pushed a stubborn leader to submission in Kenya, changed leadership in Nepal, and now confused the SADC Chair to flee out of Madagascar? The first lesson is that this new phenomenon demands new methodological frameworks. Our standardized academic tools from structured interviews to formal observations are no longer fit for purpose. How do you study a movement that is more emotion than strategy? How do you create a linear, coherent story out of something that is, by its nature, chaotic, fluid, and deeply personal?

The few academic papers I have read on the Kenyan protests, for example, reveal this disconnect from the very abstract. The language is off, the characterizations are misaligned, and the narrative is forced into a neat sequence of events. When you speak to those on the frontlines, you realise these protests are fuelled by the raw emotions of a generation born in crisis, a generation that has only ever seen a better world through the filtered lens of TikTok and Instagram.

I am young, but even I feel my positionality is off when it comes to truly understanding these Gen Z movements as well. It requires a new approach perched on participatory research, led not by senior academicians, but by young researchers who understand the lingo, feel the struggle, and can navigate the digital and emotional dynamics these movements inhabit.

This brings me to my final two points.

First, a warning to leaders everywhere: Before these youths come for your government and start declaring them terrorists, address the crises they face every single day. Address the unemployment crisis, the housing crisis, and the cost-of-living crisis. Respect their way of life; do not try to govern their art and self-expression as if you are protecting a Pandora’s box. It is already open.

Second, a plea to NGOs, CSOs, and academics: Spend more time listening than talking. These young people know what they want. They do not need their thinking diluted through the abstractions of “capacity building” workshops and logical frameworks. Partner with them on their unstructured, unplanned, and unframed terms. Let us study them not for our own publications and reports, but to amplify their aspirations for a decent life. We must descend from our ivory towers, wear their hats, learn their language, and not impose our vision of the future upon them. Theirs is the only one that matters now.