Introduction

This edited volume emerges from an interest in tracking citizen driven dissent and resistance to autocracies across Africa. In the last ten years, the African continent has witnessed the agency demonstrated by youth challenging electoral and broader governance deficits. These deficits are manifest in the manipulation of elections through power sharing agreements, voter fraud and the engagement of sophisticated international actors who mobilise technological warfare in electoral processes. The Cambridge Analytica debacle in Kenya and Nigeria among many other countries globally was illustrative of the risks associated with a world in which our data is publicly available to the highest bidder because of “progress” (Madowo 2018). Popular protests have increasingly played a role in getting strongmen out of office and/or pushing governments to pay greater attention to the loud murmurs of socio-political discontent that will not wait for the performance of the next election cycle. It is evident that the pursuit of Africa’s freedom and self-determination is being waged on the streets and squares of African cities and towns.