Review of African Political Economy

Biniam Sbhatu recounts historian Alemseged Tesfai’s powerful 2025 United Nations seminar, where Tesfai condemned the #UN’s 1952 decision to deny #Eritrea’s self-determination and honored the resilience of its people.

buff.ly/DSQdTQ3

Climate Negotiations in the Age of Warmongering, Militarism and Failed Multilateralism - ROAPE Climate activist and author Kola Ibrahim connects the necolonial structure of climate finance to growing militarism and fading multilateralism. Drawing on Israel's ongoing, genocidal destruction of th...

Kola Ibrahim argues that climate justice movements must look beyond much-hyped climate negotiations to challenge the dominant capitalist interests driving imperialist warmongering & climate breakdown.

#COP30 #ClimateAction

roape.net/2025/10/01/c...

(PDF) Wallerstein after ’68: Marxism and the Making of The Modern World-System PDF | This article examines the intellectual foundations of Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems analysis, focusing on the formative period of the late... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...

📝 My new article on Immanuel Wallerstein is out in Journal of World-Systems Research. It builds on my earlier piece for @roapejournal.bsky.social and examines how Marxism shaped The Modern World-System.

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Every African should have a read.

Liam Taylor writes powerfully about how the market economy has commodified Uganda’s fish, cattle, and land in ways that enrich elites and markets while dispossessing and impoverishing ordinary people, causing ecological destruction and leaving society unstable and restless.

buff.ly/L8TWSb0

Let them eat plastic! - ROAPE In her thought-provoking blog, Celiwe Mxhalisa shines light on how capitalism has moved beyond exploiting natural resources to commodifying its own waste and pollution. This shift has created a new…

In her blog, Mxhalisa shows how capitalism now commodifies its own waste. This shift creates an exploited “counter-productive labour” engaged in waste picking activities in a rotten system hellbent on producing more rubbish than goods for profit. #climatechange #globalwarming

buff.ly/HSiFigX

Amílcar Cabral’s life, legacy and reluctant nationalism – an interview with António Tomás - ROAPE As the month of September mark 101 birthday of Amilcar Cabral, we repost an interview with António Tomás, who wrote Cabral’s biography in the 21st century. Tomás speaks about Cabral’s political…

101 years ago today, Amílcar Cabral, revolutionary leader of Guinea Bissau, was born. To mark his birthday we are resharing an interview with his biographer António Tomás, author of Amílcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist.

buff.ly/Fh87nkc

The new face of imperialism in Africa - ROAPE Caleb Oppong paints a damning picture of the new scramble for Africa unfolding in the 21st century. He sees it as a process characterised by fierce competition between old and emerging imperial…

Oppong discusses the new #imperialism in #Africa. He sees it as a process of fierce competition between old and new imperial powers, manipulating Africa's corrupt elite. This new scramble sustained by hypocrisy, geopolitics, and African underdevelopment.

buff.ly/OIcd9d3

How South Africa’s Taxi Recapitalisation Programme deepens precarity and workers' resistance - ROAPE Siyabulela Christopher Fobosi revisits the Taxi Recapitalisation Programme (TRP) through the lens of precarious work, with a particular focus on minibus taxi drivers and marshals in Johannesburg.…

Drawing upon 41 interviews and 200 hours of observant participation, Siyabulela Fobosi delivers a scathing criticism of South Africa’s Taxi Recapitalisation Programme, arguing that it deepens precarity and workers’ resistance.

Colin Stoneman on liberation struggle in Zimbabwe and ROAPE's radical origins - ROAPE Ben Radley speaks with longstanding ROAPE editor Colin Stoneman about his political journey from chemist to Marxist political economist working on Zimbabwe. The interview explores Stoneman's impressio...

Longstanding ROAPE editor Colin Stoneman recalls his impressions of #Zimbabwe under colonial occupation, the country’s liberation struggle and its leading unionist & political figures, including Morgan Tsvangiri.

roape.net/2025/09/03/c...

IT'S SHUTDOWN TIME - ROAPE ROAPE believes it is not enough for us to preach a radical anti-neoliberal politics and not practice or attempt to develop an alternative work ethic to neoliberal capitalism in our work on the…

We inform our readers and supporters that we are embarking on our summer shutdown from August 11 to 29 on our website and social media. Thank you very much for your understanding. Please check out our most recent articles!

buff.ly/QGPhQHZ

‘When I was a student of Fanon’: an interview with Frej Stambouli - ROAPE In celebration of the Fanon's centenary, we repost a interview with the Tunisian sociologist, Frej Stambouli who remembers his teacher Frantz Fanon. Stambouli describes Fanon’s lectures at the…

In celebration of Fanon's centenary, we repost an interview with the Tunisian sociologist, Frej Stambouli who remembers his teacher #FrantzFanon. Stambouli considers Fanon’s legacy and his anger, reason and kindness, recalling, ‘I will never forget the generosity of Fanon’.

Exploring Africa's Role in the International Organization for Mediation (IOMed): African Solutions with a Chinese Touch? - ROAPE In this piece, Chimdessa Fekadu Tsega provides some insights on the aims, functions, prospects and  even questions regarding a new organisation, known as the International Organisation for Mediation…

Chimdessa Fekadu Tsega discusses the role of Africa in a China-led initiative for conflict resolution, exploring its aims, prospects and challenges as well as questions Africa might need to confront
buff.ly/jEsczk1

The editorial from the latest issue of ROAPE journal, including links to freely access all the listed articles:

Caught in the fishers’ net? The colonial plunder of Western Sahara’s natural resources, by Blanca Camps-Febrer & Enrique Bengochea Tirado

roape.net/2025/07/30/c...

Sleeping beauty and the masses – Fanon’s class analysis of the postcolony - ROAPE In the wake of Frantz Fanon’s 100th birthday, Sam Chian offers a close reading of The Wretched of the Earth, arguing that Fanon’s primary intervention lies in his class analysis of colonial…

To mark Fanon’s 100th, Sam Chian revisits The Wretched of the Earth, examining Fanon’s critique of the national bourgeoisie and the working class while exploring his faith in the peasantry and international solidarity to achieve socialism. #Fanon100
buff.ly/7YXVZnn

100 years ago today, Frantz Fanon was born.

Martiniquais by birth, Algerian by struggle #Fanon100 was not only a seminal thinker of anti-imperialist struggles in Africa and the Global South, but also a revolutionary activist.

"What matters is not to know the world but to change it"

In a new blog for roape.net, journalist Khadija Sharife argues the asset theft of African military intellectual property signals a continuation of imperial plunder and resource extraction in digital and scientific form.

roape.net/2025/07/09/t...

Peter Lawrence’s radical journey from ROAPE co-founder to committed socialist - ROAPE In the second instalment of a two-part interview, Chinedu Chukwudinma speaks with Peter Lawrence, founding editor of ROAPE. Lawrence reflects on his early involvement with the ROAPE journal, his…

In part 2 of his interview, ROAPE's Peter Lawrence reflects on his early engagement with #ROAPE journal, Eurocommunism, his travels through Hungary, East Germany, and Uganda, as well as his perspective on development economics.

buff.ly/WT7WEks

She was joined by Joey Kok(African Studies), Justin Pearce(@jsas-journal.bsky.social)‬, Bettina Engels(@roapejournal.bsky.social‬), George Bob-Milliar(African Affairs) & Stephanie Rudwick(Modern Africa) for a roundtable discussion on how publishers can address asymmetries in knowledge production.

#BlackSky #Kenya

Peter Lawrence’s radical journey from ROAPE co-founder to committed socialist - ROAPE In the second instalment of a two-part interview, Chinedu Chukwudinma speaks with Peter Lawrence, founding editor of ROAPE. Lawrence reflects on his early involvement with the ROAPE journal, his…

In part 2 of his interview, ROAPE's Peter Lawrence reflects on his early engagement with #ROAPE journal, Eurocommunism, his travels through Hungary, East Germany, and Uganda, as well as his perspective on development economics.

buff.ly/WT7WEks

Youthquake – How Kenya’s Gen Z Took on IMF Austerity - ROAPE As Kenya marks the first anniversary of the uprising that shook the nation on 25 June 2024, Abdirashid Diriye reflects on the pivotal role played by Generation Z. He explains how the youth’s…

As #Kenya marks the first anniversary of the anti-austerity, anti-IMF, anti-Ruto uprising that shook the nation on 25 June 2024, Abdirashid Diriye reflects on the pivotal role played by GenZ
#occupyparliament #RutoMustGo

buff.ly/3HDb0ng

Elites and transactional belonging – the cases of Rhodes, Trump and Musk - ROAPE Tamuka Chekero argues that elites like Rhodes, Trump, and Musk practise “transactional belonging,” treating identity as a strategic tool rather than a genuine connection. He contends that their…

In this piece, Tamuka Chekero argues that elites like Rhodes, Trump, and Musk practise "transactional belonging" that allows them to dodge accountability, sidestep regulation, and exploit the systems.

buff.ly/aMR1iC5

Peter Lawrence’s radical journey from student-activism to Ujamaa - ROAPE In the first instalment of a two-part interview, Chinedu Chukwudinma speaks to ROAPE’s founding editor, Peter Lawrence, about his political trajectory as a left-wing activist. The interview explores…

From Sussex activism with Thabo Mbeki to teaching under Nyerere's Ujamaa—ROAPE's founding editor Peter Lawrence reflects on a lifetime of socialist struggle in #Africa. Stay tuned for part 2 next week.

buff.ly/5i09wig

“We and all the others around the world who campaigned… were successful.”
– Peter Lawrence on global solidarity that helped commute the death sentences of the Rivonia Trialists. read his interview: roape.net/2025/06/18/p...

Peter Lawrence is the tall man with glasses in the centre wearing a shirt and sweater during the 1964 Sussex student anti-Apartheid Brighton-to-London March. Legend! And he's still a lefty ! roape.net/2025/06/18/p...

YouTube video by University of Sussex Alumni Network University of Sussex students, including Thabo Mbeki, march against apartheid 1964

“In those days, you could go right up to the steps of Downing Street… Thabo, someone else and I handed the letter in.”

– Peter Lawrence on delivering a petition with Thabo Mbeki during the 1964 Sussex student anti-Apartheid march. ‪@sussex.ac.uk‬
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJK2...

Peter Lawrence’s radical journey from student-activism to Ujamaa - ROAPE In the first instalment of a two-part interview, Chinedu Chukwudinma speaks to ROAPE’s founding editor, Peter Lawrence, about his political trajectory as a left-wing activist. The interview explores…

From Sussex activism with Thabo Mbeki to teaching under Nyerere's Ujamaa—ROAPE's founding editor Peter Lawrence reflects on a lifetime of socialist struggle in #Africa. Stay tuned for part 2 next week.

buff.ly/5i09wig

Chinese capital and economic transformation in Africa: what has changed after Covid-19? <p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" dir="auto" id="d70549e94">Chinese capital plays a role in supporting economic transformation in Africa. This briefing analyses how ...

What has happened to Chinese firms in Africa after Covid-19? My new (open access!) article for @roapejournal.bsky.social here:

www.scienceopen.com/hosted-docum...

Capitalist crime in Africa – Maximum profit, little investment - ROAPE Last year ROAPE publish new edited collection, Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa: The Neoliberal Period. The volume brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and blog posts…

We share Laureen Snider’s Afterword from #ROAPE’s edited collection Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa (2024). She situates economic crime within global neoliberal #capitalism as profit-hungry firms invade Africa with no regard for its people.
buff.ly/5Qe5nDW