DOI: 10.36344/ccijhss.2019.v05i10.005

Pages: 316-328

When I received the invitation to make a presentation on “the impact of the Arab Spring on sub-Saharan Africa (or perhaps vice versa),” I embarked upon an extensive search for literature on the topic via libraries, archives, and the Internet. My search yielded two major works, the November 2011 report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) titled Africa and the Arab Spring: A New Era of Democratic Expectations and an edited volume titled Africa Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (2011), and many news articles. An examination of these writings made it possible for me to delineate the following three themes within which their analyses have been subsumed in this essay: (1) the struggle over conceptualizing the Arab Spring, (2) the competing postulates on the possibility for the spread of the Arab Spring across Africa, and (3) the consequences from the Arab Spring. In the end, a conclusion is drawn and a recommendation is made based on the discussion.