The Arab Spring, Populism and Gen Z
I was in Cairo in January 2011. Tunisia had just fallen. The region was rising. The streets were full of exuberant youth. They had cast aside their fear of the repressive Mubarak regime. But they were not, initially, calling for its downfall. Their demands were much simpler. I remember being in Tahrir on 25 January and hearing the chant ‘bread, freedom and social justice’.
The energy had seemed to be draining from the street as Mubarak indicated he might compromise with the population. But when the regime subsequently reached for the truncheon, rather than the telephone, the demands began to morph, hardening into the famous cry ‘al shaab ureed al sakoot al nitham’ (The people want the fall of the regime) after the infamous (and frankly terrifying, but equally laughable) Charge of the Camels on 4 February.
Regimes in countries across the region watched and learned. Ben Ali had not resisted: he was ousted. Mubarak had tried to compromise: he was ousted. Gadhafi resisted, but not quickly enough: he was lynched. Ali Saleh in Yemen was forced out of power after nearly a year of violence on the streets. Al-Assad drew the conclusion that he needed to escalate to maximum violence as quickly as possible: Syria collapsed into a dreadful and calamitous civil war. Bahrain crushed its revolt before it really got going.
Other countries watched the same events and drew different conclusions. Violent reaction to the protests merely fanned the flames and transformed the protestors demands - from social justice to regime change. Early, swift and decisive compromise was clearly the best way forward. Jordan’s King was an early mover, dismissing the government and announcing constitutional reform which included giving limited powers to government. The protestors were mollified and went home, but many commentators felt at the time that the reforms promised were too timid and did not tackle the root causes of the unrest. Morocco, faced with the same set of concerns, went further. The early intervention by The King, announcing major constitutional reforms, strengthening democracy through granting more powers to Government and Parliament and giving the judiciary greater independence, calmed the streets and became widely viewed as the model response.
The key to survival (and continued legitimacy in the eyes of the population) appeared to be not to resort to violence. To act quickly and decisively. To listen to the demands of the people and respond to them. To grant greater freedoms and cede power to democratic institutions in exchange for remaining in power. Those are good lessons to have drawn from the tumult of 2011. Those countries which followed these guidelines emerged in better shape than those that did not.
And so to 2025.
In Egypt, nearly 15 years after that remarkable Spring, none of the factors that caused the people to take to the streets in massive and continuous numbers in bold defiance of the apparently immoveable Mubarak regime have gone away - poverty, lack of social justice, corruption (Egypt only scores 30 out of 100 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Monitor – putting it in 130th place globally and 12th (out of 18) in the MENA Region), poor economic opportunity, lack of jobs, poor (and poor access to) public services (Egypt only has 0.68 doctors per 1,000 people – by way of comparison, the OECD average is 3.7). Despite massive injections of international investment (from the Gulf as well as the IFIs) and colossal infrastructure projects, these problems all remain daily factors of life.
Egypt needs to create up to two million new jobs every year merely to keep pace with its own demographic increase, before it even begins to consider creating economic growth. That means a sustained economic growth rate of around 7% p.a – in 2023/2024, Egypt’s GDP growth rate was only 2.4%. The longer the delta between required and actual growth continues, the more youth will be joining the serried ranks of the unemployed and the greater the latent demands for social justice and employment will grow. At some point, it seems inevitable that the dam will burst and protests will once more erupt onto the streets in defiance of President Sisi’s impressive security apparatus.
Similar concerns persist in Jordan. There are some positive indicators: GDP growth in 2025 is around 3%. Inflation is relatively low (2.1%, with food inflation running at 2.6%). Jordan scores comparatively well on the health index, with 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people. And Transparency International ranks Jordan as the 59th least corrupt country in the world and seventh in the MENA Region. But, problems lie just beneath the surface. Public sector debt is above 100% of GDP, requiring the government to run deficits in order to meet its repayments and reducing funding available for key public services, including education and health. The unemployment rate is uncomfortably high, at 22%. But youth unemployment is more than double that - running at 46%, whilst female participation in the workforce, at only 15.5%, is one of the lowest in the world. The overall size of the population is projected to fall by 0.28% in 2025, driven by net emigration as the young leave in search of jobs, but with 50-55% of the population aged under 35 (and 33% under 14), unless Jordan can find significant economic growth to soak up the numbers coming through to the job market, it, like Egypt, is storing up problems for its future.
And yet, so far, in neither Jordan nor Egypt have there been significant Gen-Z protests. Which leads us back to Morocco. Morocco scores 37 on Transparency International’s Corruption Index, putting it at 10 out of 18 countries in the MENA Region and 99th globally. More than half of Morocco’s population is under 35 years of age. Youth unemployment is reported at 36% and even amongst university graduates, it hovers at around 20%. The most recent figures show only 0.71 doctors/1000 people.
And it was the issue of access to decent healthcare that appears to have been the trigger which unleashed the Gen-Z protests in late September, after eight pregnant women died in a regional hospital in Agadir. Just as in 2011, there are no calls for the overthrow of the State and there has been no mention of the King, for whom the public retains a genuine affection, verging on veneration. Rather, the decentralised, leaderless, and anonymous protests, formed under the digital banner ’Gen Z 212’ have focused their ire on fiscal, economic mis-prioritisation and political marginalisation. The movement’s chants of ‘We want hospitals, not stadiums’ draw the abrupt contradistinction between the enormous expenditure which is being poured into massive national infrastructure programmes, (including roads and stadiums in preparation for the 2025 African Cup of Nations and the 2030 Football World Cup), rather than into public services (primarily health and education); improved economic opportunity (access to training); and greater transparency and accountability in government (one demand is that the deeply unpopular PM Aziz Akhanouch be removed from office).
The fact that the protests spread very quickly across the country, with demonstrations in 11 cities, suggests that this list of demands has struck a chord amongst the youth. After an initially heavy-handed response from the police and security forces, which triggered an equally violent backlash from the protestors (and may have contributed to the protests spreading), the Moroccan State appears to have remembered the lessons of 2011 and become more conciliatory. In response, the protests have died down.
The King has led this approach. In his Speech at the opening of Parliament on 10 October, HM Mohammed VI, was very clear that he recognised that the protestors had legitimate cause for complaint, noting that it was crucial that Morocco did not invest in national flagship projects at the cost of social programmes. The King also made it clear that the objective of the Parliament and Government should be ‘to improve the living conditions of citizens’ ‘achieve social justice’ and ‘to accelerate the creation of jobs, especially for young people, to ensure tangible progress in the education and health sectors’.
This is a key moment for Morocco. The issues which drove the whole region into flames in 2011 have not gone away. Left unaddressed, they will serve only to further degrade trust between the youth and the authorities. With such a large youth demographic, it is clearly in the country’s security and economic interests to find an inclusive economic growth model to demonstrate that its astonishing economic development and increasing profile in the region can be achieved without damaging its own social contract.
And, to be fair, the State has reacted aggressively to the King’s call to arms. The Government has commented “the message has been received” calling for dialogue and announcing the acceleration of health-related projects. And Parliament subsequently voted through a budgetary package increasing expenditure on health and education by $14 billion (a 16% increase). If this response continues, and there is genuine reform to the health and education systems and action is taken to address youth employment and increase transparency, the protests could come to be seen as the moment when trust was restored and the youth began to believe in a common future for Morocco.
So what does this have to do with the global surge in populism?
No one will pretend that the issues of social fracture; lack of access to utilities and amenities; weak economic opportunity; increasing pressure on under-funded public services; or a decline in trust between State and Population leading to a perception that large parts of society are being left behind, are unique to Egypt, Jordan or Morocco. There has also been a progressive breakdown of the social contract and trust across Europe and America.
It is a phenomena which the populist right has seized. Offering simple solutions – expel the migrants; cut the public sector; get rid of woke; withdraw from international institutions – which claim to be able to solve complex inter-generational problems. For those for whom nothing is working and who fear they will be worse off than their parents and their children worse off again, that siren song of simple solutions is understandably attractive.
And for the youth, faced with the triple apocalypse of climate change, the collapse of the global institutions which have guaranteed our collective security for the past 80 years and the advent of AI which is swallowing up their jobs, the attraction of simple solutions is all the greater. For policymakers, the message is clear — ignoring youth grievances, especially in an age of rapid digital mobilization, is increasingly dangerous. For their part, the youth will have to answer the question of how to translate digital momentum into lasting institutional and economic change.
But we have to be honest – as my father would say ‘if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is’. These are difficult, multi-faceted problems. There are no simple solutions: solving them will take patience, time and the consistent dedication of resources. And whilst they go about solving them, political leaders will have to keep earning and re-earning the trust of a suspicious youth by demonstrating over and over again that they not only understand, but that they are committed to making the changes necessary. If political leaders do not have the courage, nerve and stamina for that effort, they will vacate the ground to the populists who will even further abuse the population by selling them the mirage of a nirvana founded on nothing but empty promises. If we allow that the happen, we will merit the disaster which will follow. If we can deliver on the undertakings King Mohammed VI has given to his people, we will have earnt repose in the sunlit pastures beyond.