Youth Political Participation in Mozambique’s Disconnected Democracy
In recent years, social media have become an integral part of young people’s daily lives. Giving users the ability to connect with others and access information quickly and easily, social media have become a powerful tool for political expression and engagement.[i] As the largest generation in history, today’s young people increasingly use social media to participate in political discourse, share their opinions, and mobilise others to take action.[ii] However, the impacts of social media on youth political participation are not entirely clear, and there is still much debate about whether social media are a force for good or bad in the political sphere.[iii]
On the one hand, social media have enabled young people to take part in political discussions and movements in ways that were previously impossible.[iv] Social media have made it easier for young people to organise and take part in protests, rallies, and other forms of activism.[v] On the other hand, there are concerns about the effects of social media, such as the potential to create echo chambers, in which young people interact only with those who share their views.[vi] Social media can also be used to spread misinformation and propaganda, which can undermine the quality of political discourse and democratic processes.[vii]
Taking Mozambique as a case study, this research investigates the impact of social media on the political participation of young people in the country, including their levels of engagement in political discussions, their attitudes towards political issues, and their participation in campaigns and social movements.[viii] Specifically, the chapter analyses the potential benefits and drawbacks of social media for youth political participation in Mozambique’s 2024 general elections.
Dércio Tsandzana is a Mozambican political scientist whose research explores youth political participation and how digital platforms are reshaping political engagement.
Methodology
The methodology for this research is based on virtual ethnography – or, more precisely, netnography – which is ideal for researching online communities, cultures, and behaviours.[ix] Without the need for direct contact with participants, netnography enables the collection and interpretation of existing digital data. This study concentrated on online discussions and interactions related to Mozambique’s 2024 general elections, paying special attention to the growing political activism linked to the hashtag #PovoNoPoder (People in Power). This digital movement offered a distinct perspective for examining how young people express their political demands, grievances, and activities online.
The study observed a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, X (previously Twitter), public WhatsApp groups, and TikTok. Over six months from October 2024 to March 2025, observations were made of online conversations, blogs, memes, videos, and comment threads. Relevant posts were identified using the platforms’ own search engines, drawing on hashtags such as #PovoNoPoder, #Moçambique (Mozambique), and #Eleições (Elections). As a researcher and digital media user from Mozambique, this author was able to analyse content in its original linguistic and cultural setting while being mindful of the dangers of personal bias.
This study was influenced by ethical considerations. Although the data was derived from publicly accessible digital content, anonymity and privacy were meticulously maintained. Quotes and posts were gathered exclusively from open forums; closed or private conversations were not included. The visible online political activity is likely to have been skewed towards more connected youth from the urban areas of Maputo and Matola, because internet access is still unequal in Mozambique, especially outside towns and cities.[x]
The study was also limited by the transient nature of digital content, which makes verification and archiving difficult. Posts, accounts, and entire narratives can be erased over time. Because there was no direct connection with the content’s authors, interpretation depends largely on contextual reading, which is perceptive but may miss offline context. This research was also subject to the possible presence of bot accounts and the constraints of limited internet connectivity in Mozambique. These factors may have influenced patterns of online engagement and, consequently, the conclusions drawn from the study.
Mozambique’s internet landscape
The internet has significantly transformed the way people communicate and participate in politics globally. According to data-tracking website DataReportal, in early 2025 there were 17.7 million active mobile phone connections in Mozambique, equating to 50.4% of the country’s total population (figure 1.1).[xi]
Some of these connections might not offer internet access, while others might only have phone and text-messaging services. Still, at the start of 2025, Mozambique’s internet penetration rate was 19.8%, with 6.96 million people using the web. Mozambique had 3.7 million social media user identities, representing 10.5% of the country’s population. Of these users, 58.7% were male and 41.3% were female.
Data from Meta’s advertising resources indicate that Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Mozambique. Facebook’s potential ad reach in the country grew by 500,000 (15.6%) between January 2024 and January 2025, according to Meta’s data. In the three months between October 2024 and January 2025, the number of Mozambicans whom marketers could contact via Facebook advertising rose by 400,000, or 12.1%.[xii]
Barriers to youth political participation
Making up more than 60% of Mozambique’s population, people under 25 are undoubtedly a large constituency, yet historically they have had low levels of formal political participation.[xiii] Many young Mozambicans express a sense of disengagement from electoral politics, citing a lack of faith in political parties, scarce economic opportunities, and an absence of meaningful representation. However, young people have embraced new forms of participation, especially online.[xiv] Political content, memes, satire, and unplanned conversations have exploded on platforms including Facebook, X, and TikTok.
On the European Partnership for Democracy’s Global Youth Participation Index, Mozambique scored 45 out of 100, reflecting a country with immense demographic potential but persistent structural barriers to youth participation.[xv] Young people are a powerful force for political and economic change, yet this potential remains largely untapped. On the index’s political affairs dimension, Mozambique scored 41 out of 100, reflecting young people’s low representation in the country’s parliament, an absence of formal advisory mechanisms, and a lack of youth quotas.
Young people’s involvement in Mozambique’s elections is similarly constrained. On the index’s elections dimension, the country scored 43 out of 100, revealing logistical difficulties, distrust in electoral institutions, and widespread voter apathy. While a national youth policy exists and efforts have been made to strengthen youth inclusion frameworks, the implementation of these measures has been slow. Political parties offer few meaningful entry points for young leaders, and the provision of civic education is inconsistent across the country. Youth political engagement became both a crucial problem and a significant uncertainty in Mozambique’s general elections held on 9 October 2024.
Mozambique’s 2024 general elections
The conduct of the 2024 elections was widely criticised. The late opening of polling stations, irregularities in voter lists, and instances of ballot stuffing in strategic districts were among the numerous problems recorded during the registration and voting stages of the election process.[xvi] International observers and local civil society organisations like Sala da Paz documented and condemned multiple cases of malpractice.
The official results showed that the ruling FRELIMO party retained a majority in parliament, although the election procedure was widely viewed as defective and opaque. This outcome reinforced many young Mozambicans’ feelings of political futility, as their online involvement did not translate into institutional change.[xvii]
The gap between official institutions and the lived realities of the population, especially young people, has become a more prominent topic of discussion since the elections. Although government officials have recognised the significance of youth inclusion, there are still few real mechanisms for engagement. As a result, digital platforms have evolved into venues for identity creation, resistance, and informal political education as well as expression.[xviii]
The 2024 elections therefore provide a critical lens through which to view Mozambique’s changing political landscape, in which young people are establishing alternative forms of engagement, often with humour, defiance, and inventiveness, and traditional channels are increasingly mistrusted.
Case study: #PovoNoPoder
The grassroots slogan-turned-movement #PovoNoPoder rose to prominence in Mozambique’s online public domain ahead of the 2024 elections. #PovoNoPoder is best understood as a symbolic and dispersed form of digital resistance, rather than a formal civil society campaign or an organised political organisation. It acted as a rallying cry for the populace, especially the young, who were fed up with the nation’s established political class, an unreliable electoral system, and institutions’ inability to address the public’s issues. Instead of using traditional modes of protest, the hashtag accompanied humour, memes, slogans, and impromptu commentary to convey a desire for radical political change.
The main players behind #PovoNoPoder were young people with digital connections, many of whom live in metropolitan and peri-urban areas like Maputo, Beira, and Nampula, although the movement lacked official leaders. Among the main actors were university students, rappers, digital artists, meme curators, amateur critics, and anonymous netizens. Crucially, the movement also struck a chord with members of the Mozambican diaspora, who amplified criticism and expressed their solidarity using the hashtag. It was challenging for the government to repress or co-opt #PovoNoPoder, since it functioned in a fluid, decentralised manner, in contrast to typical political groups.
No official political-party plan or civic campaign served as the inspiration for #PovoNoPoder. Rather, it developed organically in mid-2024 on sites like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and X as online grievances about pre-election anomalies started to flare up. Memes and short videos began to use the phrase while ridiculing the political establishment, particularly FRELIMO’s power and the alleged appropriation of electoral institutions.
The emergence of #PovoNoPoder, which reached its zenith around polling day on 9 October, accompanied a broad public outcry against election irregularities, such as problems with voter registration, claims of intimidation, and erratic correspondence from electoral authorities. Long-standing complaints, like elite impunity, urban inequality, and youth unemployment, added to these annoyances, fostering an environment that was conducive to a digital rupture. Particularly after photos and videos of alleged ballot fraud and disturbances at polling stations went viral, the hashtag’s popularity skyrocketed. The hashtag evolved into a vehicle for political storytelling and internet mobilisation, offering immediate criticism and emotional support at a turbulent moment.
Social media as a political forum
Online discontent continued after the elections. Between October 2024 and March 2025, numerous posts were published on X with the hashtag #PovoNoPoder. Most users, primarily young people, used the hashtag to express their frustration with the ruling party.
In one example, a video clip shows police using tear gas and fighting with teenage protesters on the street.[xix] The excerpt reveals how internet platforms have evolved into venues for recording and challenging state violence in Mozambique. The post highlights the harsh methods used to quell dissent, especially among young people who want to express themselves politically outside established channels. The post serves as both evidence and testimony, turning regular social media use into a political act of resistance and witness.
This example shows how digital media can act as a virtual forum in which young people can reveal abuses and spark public anger. Such videos inspire, motivate, and emotionally energise viewers in addition to providing information. In this way, digital engagement becomes embodied in real feelings of dread, danger, and confrontation, rather than being restricted to hashtags or abstract criticism. Outrage, sadness, and solidarity are key components of the way young people interact with politics in constricted and monitored political environments. In short, social media enable a new kind of affective political participation.
In other posts on X, users, again mainly young people, shared messages with revolutionary undertones, expressing a belief that the time for change had arrived. One such post (translated from Portuguese) read as follows:
This is the best moment to be Mozambican … I am EXTREMELY PROUD of the UNITY we are showing as a people. We are the most united 20% in all of history.
LET’S SAVE MOZAMBIQUE
THE REVOLUTION HAS ALREADY ARRIVED … !!
#SaveMozambique #ThisCountryIsOurs #7November #POVONOPODER[xx]
This post demonstrates the affective and symbolic aspect of young people’s digital political participation in Mozambique. Social media sites like X are used for more than just criticism or satire; they are also employed to create shared feelings, validate identities, and envisage different political futures. The message above uses urgency and an emotionally charged vernacular, rather than formal political language or institutional speech, to evoke a sense of resistance and affiliation. It also illustrates how #PovoNoPoder serves as a discursive forum in which demands for civic unity, national redemption, and dignity come together.
Meanwhile on Facebook, the hashtag #PovoNoPoder was widely shared by young people as a form of support for presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who appropriated the youth protest movement to gain sympathisers and build a political challenge to FRELIMO. Several pages were created with the aim of amplifying the voice of #PovoNoPoder, always in connection with the 2024 elections. This approach was in contrast to the use of the hashtag on X, where the movement appeared less directly tied to the electoral process.
In one Facebook post, for example, a video shows young people protesting in the streets of Maputo and driving the police away from a meeting point.[xxi] The police, who are typically the aggressors, are shown as being pushed back by the very young people they are trying to suppress. In the post, the video is accompanied by Mondlane’s name and the hashtag #PovoNoPoder.
The way that digital platforms are used to combine informal activism with official political processes is one example of how youth political participation and social media in Mozambique are changing. Facebook has become a platform on which symbolic opposition is more overtly translated into electoral engagement, in contrast to X, where the hashtag #PovoNoPoder often functioned as a more general symbol of resistance and collective frustration. In another post on Facebook, a call to action urges young people to act for change and stop the violence.[xxii] Much of the youth-led digital mobilisation during Mozambique’s 2024 elections was marked by emotion and urgency for change.
It is worth noting that the durability of young Mozambicans’ digital political involvement is also impacted by the cyclical nature of elections and the volatility of online attention. Digital movements often pick up steam during political crises or election contests, but once the current event is over, this intensity usually fades.
This transience raises fundamental questions about whether online energy is being channelled into longer-term forms of civic participation, institution building, or community organising. Young activists often find it difficult to sustain their projects because of inadequate civic infrastructure, scarce resources, and a lack of supportive institutional processes. Consequently, postelection periods are marked by declines in digital engagement, highlighting the challenges of converting episodic online mobilisation into sustained political influence within Mozambique’s evolving democratic landscape.
Conclusion
More than just a political struggle, Mozambique’s 2024 general elections revealed how youth political participation in the digital age is changing and often conflictual. Social media platforms have emerged as crucial forums for the expression of dissatisfaction, the formation of identities, and alternative conceptions of power, even though many young people have lost faith in traditional politics.[xxiii] Movements like #PovoNoPoder show that young people in Mozambique are not passive; rather, they are actively involved, albeit often outside established political systems. Their involvement is multifaceted, ranging from confrontational to symbolic to increasingly digital. But there are conflicts in these interactions, too.
Youth engagement runs the risk of losing its transformative and moral force when it becomes enmeshed with party-political objectives or reflects the violence it aims to oppose. These inconsistencies highlight Mozambique’s larger fight to democratise public space, both real and virtual, as well as institutions. In Mozambique, youth political engagement follows nonlinear and ill-defined paths. These are full of opportunity, innovation, and resistance, but they are also shaped by history and limited by systemic injustices.
The challenge is not to ask whether young Mozambicans are political but to acknowledge and support the various complicated and sometimes unsettling ways in which they are already changing the political landscape – post by post, hashtag by hashtag, and, when necessary, voice by voice in the streets.
This chapter is part of a Deep Dive of Young Researchers who worked on Youth Participation for three years. This deep dive is a global collection of 12 case studies unpacking how young people are reshaping political engagement.
The Young Researchers’ Network is an initiative developed in the framework of the European Democracy Hub and EPD’s Women and Youth in Democracy WYDE Civic Engagement project, supported by the European Union.
[i] Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (London: Polity, 2012).
[ii] Brian Loader et al., “The networked young citizen: social media, political participation and civic engagement”, Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 2 (2014): 143–50.
[iii] James Sloam and Matt Henn, Youthquake 2017: The Rise of Young Cosmopolitans in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2019).
[iv] Antonio Cortés-Ramos et al., “Activism and Social Media: Youth Participation and Communication”, Sustainability 13, no. 18 (2021): 10485.
[v] Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, “The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics”, Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 5 (2012): 739–68.
[vi] Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You (Penguin UK, 2011).
[vii] Samuel Woolley and Philip Howard, Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
[viii] Dércio Tsandzana, “Reporting on Everyday Life: Practices and Experiences of Citizen Journalism in Mozambique”, in New Journalism Ecologies in East and Southern Africa. Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South, edited by Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu, and Dumisani Moyo (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).
[ix] Robert Kozinets, Netnography: Redefined (London: Sage Publications, 2016).
[x] Tsandzana, “Reporting”.
[xi] Simon Kemp, “Digital 2025: Mozambique”, DataReportal, 3 March 2025, https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-mozambique.
[xii] Kemp, “Digital 2025”.
[xiii] “Mozambique Data”, World Bank, 2025, https://data.worldbank.org/country/mozambique.
[xiv] Dércio Tsandzana, “Redes Sociais da Internet como ‘Tubo de Escape’ Juvenil no Espaço Político-Urbano em Moçambique” [Internet Social Networks as a Youth “Escape Tube” in the Political-Urban Space in Mozambique], Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 40, no. 2 (2020): 167–89.
[xv] “Explore Youth Participation in Mozambique”, Global Youth Participation Index, European Partnership for Democracy, 2025, https://gypi.epd.eu/country-reports/mz.
[xvi] Zenaida Machado, “Mozambique’s Ruling Party Wins Elections Amid Nationwide Protests”, Human Rights Watch, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/24/mozambiques-ruling-party-wins-elections-amid-nationwide-protests.
[xvii] Domingos Getimane et al., “Impact of news consumption on social media during the 2024 electoral campaign in Mozambique”, Insight – News Media 7, no. 1 (2024): 668.
[xviii] “Mozambique: Post-Election Internet Restrictions Hinder Rights”, Human Rights Watch, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/06/mozambique-post-election-internet-restrictions-hinder-rights.
[xix] Moz Informa, “!!! Na Av. Eduardo Mondlane” [!!! On Eduardo Mondlane Avenue], X, 22 November 2024, accessed 30 November 2025, https://x.com/mozinforma/status/1859925353088864538?s=20.
[xx] O Tigre Branco, “Esse é o melhor momento para ser um Moçambicano” [This is the best moment to be Mozambican], X, 5 November 2024, accessed 30 November 2025, https://x.com/Cheque_Senpai/status/1853872286970900622.
[xxi] Kelven Mídia, “A população contra a Polícia da República de Moçambique” [The population against the police of the Republic of Mozambique], Facebook, 24 October 2024, accessed 30 November 2025, https://www.facebook.com/kelvenmidia/videos/855214910098840/.
[xxii] DW Africa, “Artistas em protesto contra violência eleitoral em Moçambique” [Artists protest against electoral violence in Mozambique], Facebook, 14 December 2024, accessed 4 February 2026, https://www.facebook.com/dw.portugues/videos/artistas-em-protesto-contra-viol%C3%AAncia-eleitoral-em-mo%C3%A7ambique/1615312362693107/.
[xxiii] Dércio Tsandzana, “Juventude urbana e redes sociais em Moçambique: a participação política dos ‘conectados desamparados’” [Urban youth and social networks in Mozambique: The political participation of the “connected but helpless”], Sociedade e Comunicação 34, no. 2 (2018): 235–50.
