Popular protests are recurrent forms of collective action in Africa through which common people and diverse actors from civil society voice their discontent and campaign for collective rights in a more or less intermittent fashion. This was the case during the colonial struggles and the political transitions towards democracy in the early 1990s, and it still seems to be the case in present day. Data on popular protest in Africa (ACLED) in the 21st century depict an unprecedented wave of protests (particularly since the 2008 economic crisis), leading scholars to demarcate a third wave of popular protests. During this wave, people have taken to the streets to complain not only about neoliberal policies, electoral fraud, incumbent presidents’ attempts to increase their mandates, and citizenship rights, but also about bread and butter issues (e.g. the cost of living, housing, food, and fuel/subsides). It is argued that rapid urbanization, rising levels of literacy, decreasing costs of participation with the territorial expansion of ICTs and telecommunications, and the dynamics of social mobilization have created sufficient contextual conditions for the massive upsurge observed. However, not every country has experienced high protest levels, and it is still unclear which contextual factor(s) matter the most in generating protest. This paper draws on the ACLED Riot and Protest dataset to explain why some countries feature higher protest levels than others and which factors explain variances in the intensity of protests. The analysis takes into account longitudinal data (1997–2017) and performs a panel data analysis to test several hypotheses which suggest that differentials in protest levels are explained by the characteristics of the regimes (ranging from full democracy to full autocracy), institutional openness, countries’ economic situations, levels of inequality, the vibrancy of civil society, and the levels of modernization (education, urbanization, and spread of ICTs). The paper contributes to a better understanding of popular protest in Africa and to how it changes across time and space.