BREAD PRICES
More than one in four people below the age of 30 in Algeria are unemployed - a central grievance of protesters who want the economy liberalized and diversified to reduce reliance on oil and gas.
In Sudan, what started as a protest about bread prices and poor living conditions turned into one about the regime.
Echoing 2011, their cry is: “The people want the regime to fall.”
But Elsheikh Ali, a 29-year-old Sudanese sales manager, said this was not exactly a second Arab Spring because the present protests were more about economic hardships than politics.
"Sudan and Algeria aren’t a second wave. They’re about hunger and the dire economic situation, and a wave of oppressed youth that haven’t gotten their full freedoms," Ali said.
"It’s not a victory in any way. People want to see accountability for all the people who brought us to this point."
Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics and author of two recent books about the Arab Spring, agrees.
"The term Arab Spring is very misleading because it implies that everything will blossom, that there's a magic bullet to resolve a severe crisis that has been in the making for decades," he said.
"What we are talking about is social protests that are symptoms of economic and political vulnerabilities."
As Algerians and Sudanese seek more freedom and better prospects, turmoil elsewhere in the region suggests their hopes for a better future may be disappointed.
Tunisia has been hailed as a success story for its democratic development, although an economic crisis has eroded living standards.
But its problems seem minor in comparison to other Arab Spring nations. In Libya, military strongman Khalifa Haftar, whom critics call the new Gaddafi, is waging war to take over a country that had already descended into bloodshed since 2011.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed in Syria's civil war. Four years of conflict have pushed Yemen, already one of the poorest Arab states, to the brink of famine.
In Sudan and Algeria, meanwhile, democracy lacks a clear way forward.
"The army wants to stay in control, whether with a civilian cover in Algeria or a direct way in Sudan," said prominent Tunisian journalist Ziad Krichen.
"The military that has tasted the sweetness of power and privileges sees itself as the only one capable of protecting those countries."
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