Current History

In our May issue, Justin Pearce explores the postcolonial trajectories of Angola and Mozambique. Pearce, a senior lecturer in history at Stellenbosch University, argues that “the past fifty years in Angola and Mozambique cannot be understood without attention to divisions that were nurtured by the particular experience of a Portuguese style of colonialism.” In both countries, leftist factions and rivals backed (often covertly) by the United States, Rhodesia, and South Africa vied for control of independence forces. After ensuing periods of civil war, the victorious factions remain the dominant players in national politics. The former liberation movements long since entrenched in power “have surrendered their claims to popular accountability and their ambitions to create more egalitarian societies,” while their rivals struggle to draw widespread support and fend off upstart alternatives.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/186/217948/Half-a-Century-of-Post-Independence-Strife-in

Pearce’s essay, “Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique,” is available along with the rest of our annual Africa issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique Angola and Mozambique both celebrated fifty years of independence in 2025. The politics of each country have been marked by a fractious past. Both endured internal conflict until the 1990s, as social divisions that were a legacy of Portuguese colonial rule became politicized amid Cold War rivalries....

In our annual Africa issue, Basile Ndjio examines the pervasive structures of legal and medical discrimination against LGBTIQ people in Cameroon. “The prevailing medical order approaches suspected or identified homosexual patients with moral preconceptions that adversely impact their lives,” often denying them care, writes Ndjio, a professor of anthropology at the University of Douala. Anti-LGBTIQ bias in Cameroon (and elsewhere) stems from the colonial-era imposition of European moral frameworks, criminalization by the postcolonial state, and contemporary conspiracy theories and moral panics. In the face of violence and marginalization, “LGBTIQ Cameroonians have devised varied tactics to cope with stigma and institutional neglect,” including underground clinics, digital networks, and partnerships with international NGOs.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/180/217947/Medical-Discrimination-Moral-Panic-and-the

Ndjio’s essay, “Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon This article examines the complex dynamics of medical discrimination and anti-LGBTIQ exclusion in Cameroon. It uses Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and Achille Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics to demonstrate how same-sex sexuality has been framed as a moral, medical, and political issue f...

In our May issue, Moses Khisa examines how Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s authoritarian rule has become more deeply entrenched despite the country having many features of formal democracy. “Uganda has experienced autocratization by elections,” writes Khisa, an associate professor of political science and Africana studies at North Carolina State University. Uganda has seen the emergence of spirited opposition figures in recent years, most recently entertainer Robert Kyagulanyi (also known as Bobi Wine). But a variety of measures maintain the status quo, including patronage, co-optation, and coercion through threats of violence or imprisonment. Now a president who once lamented that African leaders cling to power too long has been in office for four decades and may be preparing to hand the reins to his son.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/174/217949/The-Making-of-Uganda-s-Deepening-Autocracy

Khisa’s essay, “The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy,” is available along with the rest of our annual Africa issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy President Yoweri Museveni, in power for four decades, has overseen a steady drift toward autocracy in Uganda. Elections have been held regularly since 1996, yet they have led not to democratization but its opposite. The ruling party uses state coercion and patronage to maintain its political dominan...

In our annual Africa issue, Patrick Desplat contextualizes the Generation Z revolt that toppled the government of Madagascar in 2025. “What initially sparked the protests in Madagascar was neither an abstract political program nor global symbolism,” writes Desplat, a scientific coordinator at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology. Rather, “everyday concerns” sparked mass discontent, as unreliable infrastructure made Internet-reliant (and mostly informal) livelihoods nearly impossible to maintain. The protest movement’s detachment from institutional politics distinguished it from previous political upheavals in Madagascar. “Without durable pathways into formal decision-making,” though, it risks following the pattern of failing to create a responsive government and democratize opportunity.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/167/217950/Gen-Z-Aspiration-Hybrid-Agency-and-the-Madagascar

Desplat’s essay, “Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising The 2025 youth uprising in Madagascar was a Gen Z–led movement sparked by chronic infrastructure failures and deepening economic precarity. Young Malagasy mobilized digital culture and global symbols to articulate local grievances and coordinate a generational protest. This mobilization represente...

In our annual Africa issue, enjoy free access (for a limited time) to an essay by Ebenezer Obadare on contradictory trends involving democracy in Africa. Increasingly regular elections across the continent may be “proof of growing support for the core tenets of liberal democracy across Africa,” writes Obadare, senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Current History contributing editor. Yet the public reaction to a series of recent coups suggests that “many Africans would sooner settle for a despot in a hurry than an elected representative who, in their minds, only offers more of the same.” Critics argue that liberal democracy is a Western imposition unsuited to African contexts, but it is doubtful that the continent’s problems would be cured by abandoning liberalism.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/199/217944/Conflicting-Signals-on-Africa-s-Democratic

Obadare’s essay, “Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament Despite elections being held across the continent, coup leaders and other foes of liberal democracy have seized on disenchantment with poor governance and economic frustrations to renew old debates about whether Africa needs a different kind of political system suited to its supposed cultural differ...

Current History’s May 2026 issue, the annual Africa issue, is now available in print and on our website at https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The issue features the following essays:

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising
Patrick Desplat (Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology)
Provoked by failing infrastructure and economic despair, youth-led protests helped to topple Madagascar’s president in 2025, yet the movement was excluded from power.

The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy
Moses Khisa (North Carolina State University)
Elections and high-profile opposition create an illusion of democracy in Uganda, as President Yoweri Museveni has only become more intolerant of challengers over four decades.

Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon
Basile Ndjio (University of Douala)
Since the colonial era, Cameroon’s sexual minorities have been treated as deviant subjects. Under the postcolonial state, criminalization is reinforced by broader forms of exclusion.

Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique
Justin Pearce (Stellenbosch University)
Through long civil wars, insurgencies, and recent protests, the main ruling and opposition parties have remained the same since both Angola and Mozambique won their freedom from Portugal.

The Expanding Sahel Coup Belt
John J. Chin (Carnegie Mellon University)
A band of countries stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea have experienced military takeovers in the past several years. Common causes include poverty, terrorism, and shifting alliances.

PERSPECTIVE
Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament
Ebenezer Obadare (Council on Foreign Relations)
Although elections are regularly held across the region, popular discontent over inequality and impunity has fueled an African backlash against liberal democracy.

BOOKS
The Early Modern World of a West African Woman
Jody Benjamin (Howard University)
The life of a local merchant who fell afoul of the Inquisition shows how colonialism and the slave trade altered everyday lives in a cosmopolitan port town on the Atlantic coast.

Volume 125 Issue 871 | Current History | University of California Press Current History | 125 | 871 | May 2026

In our annual South Asia issue, Šumit Ganguly reviews a new book by Srinath Raghavan on Indira Gandhi’s years in power in India. Ganguly, director of the Huntington Program on Strengthening US–India Relations at the Hoover Institution, says that India’s politics continue to be shaped by the late prime minister’s decisions “and the concomitant forces that she set in motion, both for good and ill.” Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency, which lasted from 1975 to 1977 and fell hardest on the poor and minorities, remains at the heart of her legacy. She also initiated economic reforms that began to liberalize the statist economy. Her populist tendencies and use of strong executive authority, undermining institutional checks, have had echoes in the tenure of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/161/217736/What-the-Emergency-Wrought

Ganguly’s review is available along with the rest of our April issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

What the Emergency Wrought A new book illuminates the lasting consequences of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of a 21-month state of emergency in the mid-1970s, running roughshod over democratic institutions and norms cultivated by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru.

In our April issue, Anirudh Krishna explores the common elements in a global wave of Gen Z protests in recent years. “With a growing sense of their own economic vulnerability,” writes Krishna, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, young people in South Asia and elsewhere “have been enraged by the perception of a corrupt and unaccountable elite hoarding opportunity for its own.” The protesters belong to a generation that is “digitally savvy and globally connected,” yet economically frustrated. Taught to believe in education as a route to social mobility, youth in developing countries have been disappointed to find few employment options beyond the informal sector. Deconcentrating power and offering “alternative ladders of opportunity” could help overcome obstacles to wider prosperity.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/152/217733/How-to-Address-the-Roots-of-Gen-Z-Frustration

Krishna’s essay, “How to Address the Roots of Gen Z Frustration,” is available along with the rest of our annual South Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

How to Address the Roots of Gen Z Frustration Youth protests that have toppled governments and brought life to a standstill in countries in South Asia and beyond are united not only by visible symbols, notably a Jolly Roger flag from a Japanese anime, but by a common underlying logic. These countries tend to share three key elements: low social...

In our annual South Asia issue, Sara Shneiderman and Salina Dolmo Lama show how discontent with corruption and nepotism, channeled by social media, brought down Nepal’s government. As most young Nepalis struggled to find jobs, widely circulated images of so-called nepo babies exposed the “elite accumulation of wealth and impunity,” write Shneiderman and Lama, both scholars at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. An ensuing ban on social media sites drew outrage, since digital spaces provided a “lifeline” for Nepalese young people at home and abroad. When the ban was lifted, social media “became a real-time archive of events” amid raucous protests and a violent response by the state. Online platforms served as “hubs for coordination, deliberation, and democratic experimentation.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/145/217738/Can-Gen-Z-Protests-Transform-Nepal-s-Political

Shneiderman’s and Lama’s essay, “Can Gen Z Protests Transform
Nepal’s Political Futures?” is available along with the rest of our April issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

Can Gen Z Protests Transform Nepal’s Political Futures? In September 2025, Nepal was shaken by youth protests against corruption and nepotism, state violence that left at least 76 people dead, and widespread destruction of infrastructure. The government was dissolved, an interim government was appointed, and elections were called for March 2026. This ess...

In our April issue, Magnus Marsden examines the long-standing connective role of Afghans in Pakistan, whose presence there is now at risk. Amid border clashes, “Pakistan has made increasingly strenuous efforts to identify remaining Afghan residents and return them to their ‘homeland,’” writes Marsden, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Sussex. Yet the territory that is now Pakistan has long been a homeland for Afghans. For centuries, “Afghan trading networks were part of a rich and complex history of commercial, military, and political interaction between Afghanistan and South Asia.” Although Afghans who arrived as refugees in recent decades have been associated with negative stereotypes, they have also become integral to social and economic life in Pakistan’s cities and borderlands. The present crackdown on Afghans reflects a recurring pattern in which they are used as “political pawns.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/139/217732/The-Imperiled-Connective-Presence-of-Afghans-in

Marsden’s essay, “The Imperiled Connective Presence of Afghans in Pakistan,” is available along with the rest of our annual South Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

The Imperiled Connective Presence of Afghans in Pakistan The mass deportation of Afghan refugees and mobile people from Pakistan to Afghanistan is reshaping trade networks and routes, dividing families, and disrupting local economies and identities. For centuries, traders and others in the Afghan diaspora were crucial to economic and cultural interconnect...

In our annual South Asia issue, Xu Peng details China’s limited interventions in neighboring Myanmar’s armed conflicts. Beijing’s approach can be described as “dual-track diplomacy,” writes Peng, a research fellow at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester. These tracks combine “formal, national-level engagement with the Myanmar state and pragmatic, often province-led engagement with the non-state authorities.” In order to limit trade disruptions, the border between Myanmar and China’s Yunnan province has become a special focus of Chinese intervention. Beijing has also sought to curtail the operations of online scam rings rooted in Myanmar’s conflict zones. “China’s influence and interference are unlikely to trigger systemic changes in Myanmar,” or build a lasting peace, but rather maintain a semblance of stability.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/133/217735/China-s-Selective-Influence-in-Myanmar-s-Conflicts

Peng’s essay, “China’s Selective Influence in Myanmar’s Conflicts,” is available along with the rest of our April issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

China’s Selective Influence in Myanmar’s Conflicts China has become a visible actor in Myanmar’s ongoing conflict, but its engagement is defined by selectivity rather than transformation. Since late 2023, Beijing has brokered borderland ceasefires and pressured local armed groups over online scams and rare earth mining. Yet it avoids broader peace...