Will Gen Z Save the World?

I was in Madagascar when it started.

Antananarivo, late September 2025. The streets were filled with young people holding signs, demanding something as simple as water, electricity, and education. It was powerful to witness. But also frightening.

Because while the majority were marching for change, others used the chaos to loot. I saw small entrepreneurs lose everything overnight. Shops broken into, bigger chains smashed too. Some people weren’t there to change the system, they were there for short-term profit. A PlayStation 4 instead of fighting corruption. And that’s the reality of revolutions: they’re never clean. They’re messy, contradictory, and full of both hope and despair.

I felt relieved when I was cozy in a plane back to La Réunion, just one hour away from all this. Yet even with that fear, I felt proud of my generation. Gen Z.

A global pattern

Madagascar isn’t an isolated case. Within the same month, the world was changing.

In Morocco, thousands of young people flooded the streets of Rabat, Casablanca, and Marrakech. Their demand? Health, education, and an end to corruption. They organized through TikTok and Discord. Nearly 200 arrests followed, along with heavy police repression.

In Nepal, the spark was a ban on social media. Within days, government buildings were on fire, including the presidential palace. The repression was devastating: nearly 100 dead, thousands injured. And yet, the power of the revolt forced the government to resign. A transitional prime minister was appointed (one that ChatGPT advised), and the social media ban was lifted.

In Peru, youth collectives mobilized against corruption, pension issues, and organized crime. The police responded with “non-lethal” weapons, arrests, and violence. Still, the protests continued.

In Indonesia, a viral manifesto “17+8 Demands” spread through student groups and influencers. The death of a moto-taxi driver during protests ignited massive mobilizations across the country. The state negotiated some concessions, but the tension remains.

In the Mediterranean, the Flotilla sails toward Gaza, carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials with the goal of breaking the Israeli blockade. Desperate after the non-action of their governments, young activists and influencers organized it themselves. Today, on the second attempt, hundreds of ships are joined, this time by European military support.

And beyond that: Serbia, Kenya, Chile. Everywhere you look, young people are rising.

Different languages, different religions, different contexts but the same generation, facing the same problems, with the same anger.

They have been trying to silence the youth, but it only fuels the anger.

My experience in Madagascar

I was in Madagascar for a month, and I lived this journey in two very different parts.

• The first was as a backpacker: struggling to cross the country on broken roads, endless taxi-brousses, no electricity for days, patchy internet, infrastructure so weak that even the simplest trip felt like an expedition.

• The second part was in Antananarivo, living like a wealthy vaza, the entrepreneur in a golden cage. Moving from one place to another in a 4×4 while people outside queued for rice. Spending weekends in seaside or lakeside villas that most Malagasy will never see, because many have never left their villages.

That contrast hit me hard. And when the protests started, I was right there in Tana: walking through the smoke, smelling burning tires. Feeling both fear and pride. Fear, because chaos always attracts violence. Pride, because despite the danger, it was my generation, the youth of Madagascar, standing up and saying: we want to live, not just survive.

A connected generation

Gen Z grew up in a world of climate crisis, economic precarity, corruption, authoritarianism, and even a pandemic. But we also grew up with something previous generations didn’t: a shared culture.

We watched the same anime, listened to the same music, scrolled the same memes. My parents never watched a Korean movie before Netflix. I can describe Korean streets, music, and fashion without ever having been there. That’s new. And honestly, sometimes I feel more connected to young Koreans than to 65+ Belgians from my own country.

So when you see the One Piece pirate flag flying at protests in Tana, Kathmandu, or Casablanca, it’s not just a gag. It’s a symbol. Pop culture is our common language. It’s the visual code of a generation that has spent years watching the same anime heroes fight for freedom.

And this changes everything. Governments still think locally, protecting their borders and privileges. But we don’t. We think across borders. If a girl in Madagascar live-streams a protest on TikTok, it doesn’t feel like “foreign news.” It feels like my friend. We’ve created an intimacy with strangers online, and now their struggle feels like our struggle.

Will Gen Z save the world?

So here we are, September 2025. Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, and beyond. Gen Z in the streets, sometimes chaotic, sometimes inspiring, always disruptive.

Some will say it’s just noise. That looters discredit the cause. That governments can repress and absorb these movements. And maybe they’re right.

But here’s the thing: for the first time, revolt is imagined at a planetary scale. By a connected generation.

We’ve also seen that international institutions don’t protect human rights as they should. The double standards “les deux poids, deux mesures” are obvious in the Middle East and elsewhere. And so, youth stop waiting for permission. They organize themselves.

Will Gen Z save the world? I don’t know.

But I know they won’t let it collapse without a fight.

And for that, I’m proud to belong to them.