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BEFORE YOU SCROLL

• Youth-led protests have hit 20+ countries since 2024, and two governments fell in a matter of weeks.

• The triggers varied, but the grievance underneath was the same: a blocked path to a stable adult life.

• While some protests have limited consequences, others can be huge for the world and for you.

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Over the last week, Paris has been gripped by mass student protests. Teenagers have taken to the streets, police have been dispatched, and images of clashes and fires have spread online, all over the conditions of French schools.

The same dynamic is playing out in India, where this week saw some of the nation’s biggest protests since its predominantly youth-led “Cockroach” movement began in May. This time, Indian youth are opposing electoral commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, who reportedly dropped 130 million names from voter registration lists. The movement’s leader, Abhijeet Dipke, was arrested by police upon landing in New Delhi over the weekend.

The same story is playing out everywhere. Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Morocco, Madagascar, Peru, and several other countries have seen their youth rise up over the last few years. Different countries, same grievances.

Even the imagery is consistent: the straw-hat pirate flag from the One Piece manga keeps appearing across these protests. It’s a global symbol pointing to a far bigger crisis than poor schools or electoral corruption.

WHAT EVEN IS A “GEN Z PROTEST”?

While the protests vary by country, they usually share a few characteristics:

• Predominantly youth-led, mainly comprising teenagers and those in their mid-to-late twenties.

• Social media organization, especially on platforms like Discord, Reddit, and TikTok.

• No single leader, although some, like India’s Cockroach movement, have notable faces.

What’s important to stress is that not every protest with young people qualifies as a “Gen Z protest.” Sri Lanka’s and Mexico’s protests, for instance, drew in older participants, too. So the term is partly a media construct.

Most of all, this isn’t a single organization; it’s a wave. Every country’s eruption has too many striking differences to be casually grouped together as one movement.

But the similarities do show a unifying thread, one that’s starting to spread across the world.

WHY NOW?

There are three broad threads that tie these protests together:

• Elite Perks vs. Everyday Life. Economic inequality runs hard in developed economies, and even harder in developing ones. And that inequality is hard to tolerate long-term. In Timor-Leste, protests were driven by perks for Members of Parliament, including a $4.2 million plan to buy 65 Toyota Prado SUVs for all MPs and grant lifetime pensions. The plan was eventually scrapped because of this.

• Services Failing, Corruption Accused. Gen Z across these countries are always looking to the future, and when that future looks bleak, the answer is to change the present. The protests in Morocco in late 2025 were largely a response to declining health and education infrastructure as Rabat continued to invest heavily in sports infrastructure ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup. That discrepancy pushed young Moroccans into the streets, prompting government agreements to boost health and education budgets.

• The Jobs Picture. Global youth unemployment hit 12.4% in 2025, according to the ILO; that represents 67 million people. Combined with other factors, the international labor market poses steep hurdles for Gen Z trying to secure stable adult positions. Throw in other economic pressures like high inflation, and anger starts to rise, eventually exploding onto the streets.

Of course, these are just umbrella factors. The data shows a correlation, not proof that these ingredients predict protests.

But they do show common grievances that young people worldwide can agree on. It’s why the One Piece flag has become a recurring symbol: it represents youth rejection of these deepening problems and what they perceive as their governments’ failure to respond.

SO… WHY DOES ANY OF THIS EVEN MATTER?

Protests, including those led by youth, are nothing new in human history. But at a time of rising inflation, geopolitical risk, climate change, and a host of other global issues, these Gen Z protests have the potential to add fuel to the fire.

As Madagascar and Nepal showed, protest waves can upend governments and shift the entire political status quo. This is even more concerning in countries integral to the global economy. France’s economic challenges have been a major reason as for why the euro has recently slid against the U.S. dollar, and they’re the same structural challenges French youth are rising up against.

As those issues deepen worldwide, so too will the wave, and with it, even more destabilization of governments and economies.

THE OASIS GAME PLAN

So as we move into 2027, and the global wave shows no signs of slowing, what should you do?

Well, no game plan or recommendations this time. The wave is too unpredictable to give general advice, and admittedly, many of the countries it has popped up in lack the same weight in the global financial system as larger, more developed economies.

Instead, as with any planning: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Start building an emergency fund that can last 3-6 months. That way, when chaos pops up and ripples to your wallet, you’ll at least have something to turn to, just in case.

TL;DR

A global wave of youth protests shares one grievance: a blocked path to a stable adult life. And depending on where that wave goes next, it can have a big domino effect for the world economy and your wallet.

VIDEO SHOWCASE

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KEY QUESTIONS

• WHAT HAPPENED? Ethiopian rebel groups formed an alliance to overthrow the government and fighting has already broken out in the north.

• WHY IT MATTERS? Ethiopia sits next to the Red Sea and produces the world’s most coveted Arabica coffee, so a new war can boost prices of both commodities.

• WHAT’S NEXT? Watch whether the coalition holds together, whether Eritrea moves from alleged backer to open combatant, and whether Oromia’s coffee belt stays out of the crossfire.

While you were sipping your morning coffee or filling up your gas tank, Ethiopia reached a potentially deadly turning point.

On September 20, seven armed opposition groups announced a united front: the Ethiopian People’s Forces Alliance. Chief among them is the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), once the dominant force in Ethiopian politics Despite deep political and ethnic divisions, they’re united by one goal: ousting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Three days later, the alliance made its move. Regional airports were seized in a major offensive that caught the federal government off guard. Fighting has since disrupted telecom networks across Tigray and spread into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions, raising an uncomfortable question: is Ethiopia sliding back into the war that killed roughly 600,000 people between 2020 and 2022, the deadliest conflict of the 21st century?

Whatever happens next won’t stay inside Ethiopia’s borders. That coffee and gas are about to feel it too.

From Dominance to Disarray

The ongoing violence is just the latest episode in a wider political saga that has gripped Ethiopia since the ethno-federal political order emerged in 1991 when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition ruled. To catch you up to speed:

• For nearly three decades, the TPLF were the dominant force within the EPRDF coalition.

• In 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed reorganized the EPRDF into the Prosperity Party, which the TPLF did not join.

• In 2020, with elections postponed over COVID-19, the TPLF called Abiy’s government illegitimate and held its own regional vote.

• Tensions turned into war. Ethiopia’s federal forces struck an unlikely alliance with longtime rival Eritrea and Amhara militias like Fano to defeat the TPLF.

The war came to a close with the signing of the Pretoria Agreement in 2022. But the deal left territorial disputes unresolved and forces only partially disarmed, a fragile peace that’s now unraveling.

A War Without Borders

Since the end of the war, Ethiopia-Eritrea relations have nosedived. As the world’s most populous landlocked country, Ethiopia wants access to the Red Sea back, specifically the Eritrean port of Assab, roughly 70km from the two countries’ shared border. That’s driving tensions between Addis Ababa and Asmara, with Ethiopia accusing Eritrea of backing Ethiopian rebels, a claim Eritrea denies.

The web keeps widening. A February Reuters investigation found an alleged training camp for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces inside Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region. In May, Sudan’s army accused Ethiopia of backing drone strikes launched from its territory, a claim Addis denies. If war reignites, the fear is it won’t stop at Ethiopia’s borders. It could pull in both its direct neighbors and even other countries into the orbit, like Egypt and the Gulf states

Why Your Gas Tank and Coffee Mug Should Care

Roughly 10% of global trade, including 5% of oil, moves through the Red Sea, which the Horn of Africa sits next to.

Ethiopia’s ongoing turmoil is kickstarting just as the Iran-backed Houthi’s seized the port city of Mocha in Yemen, which sits next to the Red Sea, adding to an already severe maritime crisis. Amid the Houthi advances, attacks on tankers and the continued restriction of traffic in the Hormuz, Brent crude climbed above the $108 a barrel.

Coffee is next in line. Ethiopia is the world’s fifth-largest producer and third-largest exporter of Arabica, the bean behind roughly 60% of global production, according to the International Growth Centre. It exported $2.89 billion worth of coffee in 2024/25, up 69.4% in value according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Oromia region of Ethiopia alone produces nearly 60% of that output, and it’s also home to the Oromo Liberation Army, an alliance member, putting the region’s coffee fields uncomfortably close to the fighting.

Prices are already stretched: coffee hit a historic high of 325 cents per pound in 2025, according to the International Coffee Organization (ICO). Take a quick look at Starbucks, too: the Tall Mocha Frappuccino has jumped over 30% from 2014 to 2024. A new war in one of coffee’s most important producers could push prices higher still.

The Regional Powder Keg

The Horn of Africa is turning into a tinderbox, and Ethiopia sits at its center. If war returns, the risk of it dragging in the wider region isn’t far-fetched.

And if it does, you might want to swap the car for an EV, and the coffee for matcha.

TL;DR: Ethiopian rebel factions have formed a coalition to topple the government, and fighting has already broken out in the north. With Ethiopia’s Eritrea standoff, Sudan spillover, and grip on Red Sea trade and global Arabica supply, a renewed war risks becoming everyone’s problem, from oil prices to your coffee order.

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