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On September 16, 2022, Mahsa a 22-year-old Kurdish girl was killed in Tehran by so-called morality police due to wearing her hijab improperly. After that, thousands of Iranians, led mainly by Gen Z women, poured into the streets protesting the Islamic Republic’s police actions. Named after the protesters’ main rally cry, the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement swept across Iran very soon and covered other aspects of Iranians’ frustration with the government. The rallies have been confronted with a violent crackdown by the regime, which denied all the accusations and blamed Western countries for sponsoring the protesters. In the lack of dialogic space, Iranians have created their own spaces of autonomy. Calling these spaces the third spaces of engagement, the authors shed light on the protesters’ disruptive daily activities on social media as well as physical spaces as leadership activities through the lens of leadership-as-practice theory. This chapter reframes the issue of hijab as an issue of authority which WLF as a youth-led movement is challenging. Observing protesters’ practices via video clips, news, photos, and social media posts, the authors give an analysis of the movement’s practices based on Harro’s cycle of liberation. The authors argue that while the movement made a huge breakthrough in building a public community around its main slogan, it is suffering from a lack of unity and inclusive collaborative dialogue. Finally, the authors offer suggestions for the movement’s future actions.

What courage is required for an emerging leader to run for office as an independent candidate in a contested election? What changes when that leader is a young woman, challenging the status quo in a male-dominated political field? And finally, how does courage intersect leadership, what is required, learned, and tested when running for office means risking one’s life? This is the story of an emerging leader, Linda K. Sibanyoni, a candidate for political office from Zimbabwe, who is leading change in her community and who is willing to exercise the courage required to do so in new, different, and unexpected ways. Her lived experience is underpinned by the intersection of gender, power, and politics. From this story of trial, courage, and risk comes discussion around the leadership practices required for change in uncertain and unstable systems.

Leading change oftentimes comes down to creating the conditions to shift the status quo of an organization, community, or nation. In the case of the pan-African movement, this is about a shift of the status quo continentally. We look back and learn how these changes took place, we study the impacts, the moves that allowed people to emerge differently, to lead effective change. The outcomes of leading this effective change often point to a shift in the status quo. That shift in how people organize and led change gets written in history books. In this scenario, we have the unique opportunity to examine these cases as emergent, hearing firsthand accounts of those individuals, people, organizations, and communities that are shaping the movements. This is that account of how leadership is conceptualized, redefined, and practiced by emerging actors across the continent today.

“Action without thought is empty; thought without action is blind” (Kwame Nkrumah). Nkrumah's sentiments describe a practice of leadership that is intentional and disrupts arbitrary borders and dividers to build a strong pan-African movement. Emerging actors today are leading change on the African continent by shaping a new vision and framework for African leadership. By understanding their stories, we deepen understanding of this framework.

In this chapter, we will share the stories of three individuals (chapter co-authors) who are exercising leadership at the intersections of grassroots organizing and political engagement, and in doing so, who are seeking to shift the status quo. Each practice-based account offers insight and firsthand accounting of how a rising generation is redefining leadership at local, regional, and transnational levels.