From AlJazeera. Story by Eleanor Whitehead.

It’s been a month since protesters in Burundi began their campaign to block President Pierre Nkurunziza from seeking a third term in office.

A May 13 coup against the 51-year-old former sports professor failed, but demonstrators are rolling out on a daily basis, calling for him to step down.
The tiny Great Lakes nation of 10 million people is one in a string of sub-Saharan countries in which popular protests have recently taken hold, reflecting growing intolerance for ineffectual leaders with an appetite for extending their time in power.

In October, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré was toppled by popular uprising after 27 years in charge. He had planned to amend the constitution and prolong his presidency, but is now holed up in the Ivory Coast.

By January, demonstrations had erupted in the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo, prompted by a draft law that critics said would enable Joseph Kabila to extend his 14-year rule. Opposition members called off the demonstrations.

Africa has a long history of uprisings.

Bullets, not the ballot box, have often been used to sweep away old dictatorships. Yet popular demonstrations have become more common in recent years, said Phil Clark, a reader in international politics at SOAS in London.

“There is more momentum for protests like these,” he argued.

“That is partly to do with social media making governments more accountable. But partly it is because countries are learning from each other; taking inspiration from each other’s protest movements.”

Revolutions in North Africa, which started in 2010 when a Tunisian trader set himself on fire in protest over the authoritarian regime, may also have exerted some slow-burning influence on the rest of the continent.

“The Arab Spring has helped to give impetus to public protest against African governments, and to show how social media can be used to mobilise protesters,” said Paul Whiteway, who heads the London office of the diplomatic advisory group Independent Diplomat.

…In some cases, recent protests have ushered through meaningful democratic progress.

Demonstrators came out victorious in Senegal in 2012, when President Abdoulaye Wade was ousted after controversially bidding for a third term.

In Burkina Faso, the military government instated in President Compaoré’s place promises to transfer power back to a civilian government later this year.

“The people have won,” the president of the Congo’s opposition Union of the Congolese Nation said after the controversial electoral law was revised in January.

But the growing appetite for political mobilisation does not necessarily translate into a more democratic continent. In many other instances, strongmen are simply growing increasingly adept at stamping out uprisings.

Read more by AlJazeera.