This episode features Professor Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at CUNY’s Baruch College and member of the doctoral faculty of The CUNY Graduate Center's Department of Political Science. Professor Mampilly discusses the ongoing wave of largely youth-led protest movements on the African continent. He gives special attention to "rural radicalism," centering political life in rural areas and the impacts of urbanization, international actors, and global power dynamics on these spaces.  He illuminates a profound shift underway: the decentering of the West and increasing involvement of Asian countries in trade partnerships on the continent. Professor Mampilly also shares his most recent research on LUCHA, a social movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and situates this movement in regional comparative and global perspective.