Africa's governance landscape has changed remarkably in 2011. While much of the world's attention has been understandably fixed on the historic political transitions in North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing its own democratic surge over the past year with advances in Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Nigeria, and Zambia, among other places. Inspired by the uprisings in the Arab Spring, there have also been protests in over a dozen other African capitals demanding greater political freedoms.
