Revolt and Protest: Student Politics and Activism in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Leo Zeilig

The evolution of student activism in sub-Saharan Africa is crucial to understanding the process of democratic struggle and change in Africa. Focusing on the recent period of 'democratic transitions' in the 1990s, Leo Zeilig discusses the widespread involvement of student activism in democratic struggles across contemporary Africa and focuses on two case studies, Senegal and Zimbabwe. He provides an historical examination of the student-intelligentsia on the continent that played a crucial role in the independence struggles across much of Africa, leading and organising nationalist movements and outlines the development of grass-root activism. Zeilig demonstrates how students shape and are shaped by national processes of political change and popular protest and reveals both the continuities and transformations in student activism in an era of austerity, crisis and poverty.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2007

About the author

Leo Zeilig is a researcher and writer of books on African politics and history. His books include a biography of Patrice Lumumba, Africa's Lost Leader (Haus Books, 2008) and a history of social movements on the continent, Revolt and Protest (I. B. Tauris, 2012). His most recent non-fiction book is a biography of Frantz Fanon, Philosopher of Third World Liberation (I.B Tauris, 2016). Leo is currently working on a study of Thomas Sankara. Eddie the Kid is his first novel and his second, An Ounce of Practice. has just been published by HopeRoad.