Box 1.5: Urban Discontent and the Arab Spring in Northern Africa
▲ A protester gestures in front of the headquarters of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party of ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali during a demonstration in downtown Tunis, January, 2011. ŠNasser Nouri. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.
CHAPTER ONE
In late 2010, protests and riots stimulated by rising fuel and food prices broke out in cities across Africa. In the North these protests quickly transformed into widespread social unrest, with citizens taking to the streets and demanding political reform. This spasm of unrest was long in the making. Demographic trends in the sub-region had generated a large youth bulge. Despite a significant expansion in access to education in preceding years, unemployment remained stubbornly high - particularly among the youth - resulting in a yawning gap between capabilities and expectations on the one hand and opportunity on the other. Although levels of inequality are, perhaps, not as severe in the North as in the rest of Africa, the statist model of economic development dominant in the sub-region has served to suppress the emergence of a dynamic private sector. It has also concentrated extreme wealth and political power in the hands of a narrow elite. Government efforts to redistribute the national wealth generated by oil and foreign
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aid through infrastructure projects, food aid and public employment schemes, ultimately proved insufficient to quell simmering discontent, which rarely found public expression in a context of political repression. It is generally less known or understood that the anger of Northern African youths also had a basis in the fact that governments throughout the sub-region had not adequately prepared for the latent urban household formation rates associated with the demographic youth bulge. A severe shortage of affordable urban rental units prevented many youngsters from marrying and starting a family of their own, simply because they did not have access to affordable independent housing. Rather, youths typically continue living with their parents until comparatively advanced ages. Given Northern African societies’ views on premarital interpersonal relations, the Arab Spring resulted not only from lack of political participation, but was also embedded in sheer social frustration. Combined, these conditions made the region vulnerable to violent conflict. In an already volatile
Sources: Anderson (2011); Joffe (2011); Campante and Chor (2012); Malik and Awadallah (2011) 54
atmosphere of public protest associated with inflation, the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor fed up with police harassment catalysed a region-wide movement. In Algeria, an immediate reduction in food and cooking oil import tariffs helped end rioting, while Morocco defused discontent by reforming its constitution and raising wages. In Tunisia and Egypt, which traditionally have permitted a degree of civic associational life, stubborn regimes confronted massive social mobilizations in their respective capital cities, ultimately resulting in regime change. In Libya, where civic associations of any kind were banned, wholesale civil war broke out, ultimately resulting in the collapse of the regime of Muammar al-Qadhafi. Cities were at the centre of the storm in Northern Africa, and the Arab Spring offers a salutary lesson to governments across the world: if the needs, aspirations and grievances of the urban masses are not addressed, civic unrest is surely on the horizon.