Connecting people and voices for radical change in Africa

Abstract

In this section of the journal, we aim to give readers of the print journal a picture of what has been published on Roape.net over the last few months, and invite you to connect and follow the articles, blogposts, authors and debates online. Details of all the blogposts referred to here are in the reference list at the end. We warmly invite all our readers to sign up to the Roape.net newsletter and WhatsApp service at the top of the home page of the website.

For much of the last few months we have been updating and redeveloping our website so that it can become the platform for the journal from 2024, when we become genuinely open access. The full content of our journal will be available from 1 January 2024. We will be available in parallel on Roape.net and on the platform of ScienceOpen, who have already uploaded and catalogued our back issues from 1974 to 2016. We have also been working on a subscription and donation page for the site, which will allow subscribers, institutions and individuals to continue to follow and support the journal’s work.

As well as redeveloping the site – with our share of minor glitches along the way – we have continued to publish regularly. A significant piece, poignant at this time of anticipated change for the journal, was Peter Lawrence’s (2023) tribute to John Saul, a founding member and editor of ROAPE, following Saul’s recent death. Peter described Saul’s remarkable life and contribution to radical African political economy. This will be the first of several reflections on – and celebrations of – Saul’s formidable contribution.

In the last week of September, we published Andy Higginbottom’s (2023) summary of his report on corporate profits in South Africa. Based on data sourced from the annual reports from 13 companies for 2022, Higginbottom argued that we must fight the latest chapter in imperialist neo-colonialism to ensure that Cecil Rhodes’ structural legacy must fall.

We also republished an extended section from Elisa Greco’s editorial for ROAPE issue 175, in which she wrote about the surge in the price of food and the role of speculation on food markets, and how these affect the lives of the poor across Africa and the world. These trends in global political economy have had a direct and dramatic impact on the course of events in Sudan since 2019: Greco (2023) powerfully unpicks the consequences of global shocks on Sudanese politics, the recent war and resistance.

Earlier in September, we posted a piece by Sayra van den Berg, Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong and David Mwambari (2023) in which they react to the king of the Netherlands’ apology in July for the country’s historical role in slavery. The authors argued that the past of slavery and (neo-)colonialism is not closed and over, and that the real structural work remains to be done.

As part of ROAPE’s ‘Capitalism in Africa’ debate series, Benjamin Rubbers (2023) presented the main ideas of his recent book Inside mining capitalism: the micropolitics of work on the Congolese and Zambian copperbelts. Rubbers is the editor of this collection of chapters and was the principal investigator of the WORKinMINING collective research project based at the University of Liège. The book examines how labour practices have been mediated, negotiated or resisted by mineworkers, unionists and human resources managers.

In another blogpost, Kristof Titeca and Yusuf Serunkuma (2023) wrote about Nasser Road in Kampala, a hotspot for the production of forged documents, ranging from academic documents, bank statements and birth certificates to identification cards. The authors argued how, in a context where the state and private institutions are considered widely corrupt, the delivery of such services and documents is regarded as indispensable.

In the context of Israeli’s murderous campaign of bombing in Gaza, we have covered the conflict with two blogposts. In the first of these, ROAPE’s Chinedu Chukwudinma (2023) wrote about Walter Rodney’s uncompromising support for Palestinian liberation. Rodney’s defence of the methods used by Palestinian freedom fighters contains many lessons for us today. He understood that Palestinian resistance against Israeli state terror is justified irrespective of the means used. In the second blog, our regular contributor Yusuf Serunkuma (2023b) wrote that the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians ought to awaken Africa to the urgent search for a home-grown language to give form to our dreams. Notions such as democracy or the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been exposed, once again, as nothing but Western self-interest.

In a stimulating and thoughtful long read on the website in October, Serunkuma (2023a) also wrote a compelling comparison between Bobi Wine of Uganda and Fela Kuti of Nigeria, both of whom are recognised as being among Africa’s most creative artists and courageous political activists for their resistance against dictatorship. Serunkuma emphasised that despite the possibility that Bobi Wine’s music and activism may have surpassed Fela Kuti’s, Wine remains underappreciated by Western observers.

Continuing the journal’s focus on Amílcar Cabral throughout this year, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Cabral’s murder, October saw the publication of an interview with Mike Powell, in which Powell spoke about Cabral’s revolutionary activism (Powell and Zeilig 2023). He talked in particular about Cabral’s relentless focus on actual political dynamics of struggle, the purpose of theory, and his focus on the mode of production. For Cabral, Powell argued, nothing was static, everything was in a process of dialectical change – processes which could be consciously influenced by people acting together.

Ahead of the Liberian elections, we published an excoriating attack on the country’s political and economic class. George Gerake Kamara (2023) argued that fate of the masses cannot lie in the hands of the frontline political parties who seek only to advance the interests of big bosses and international financial institutions. What is needed, Kamara argued, is a force that will mobilise the people around transformative ideals against the existing system.

We have had a higher level of submissions to Roape.net than before and we regularly commission pieces, while promoting content on X/Twitter, Facebook and through our WhatsApp channel. People’s engagement with Roape.net remains impressive, and feedback positive. In 2024, we envisage promoting our journal material more widely: this will include recent articles, briefings and debates, and also back issues and articles that speak to contemporary contexts. We are confident that giving this content a new life – and new audience – will provide a rich resource for researchers, students and activists.

About Roape.net

Together with the print journal, Roape.net seeks to develop a critique of the existing balance of class and social forces in African political economy as a vital part of the project of radical political, environmental and economic transformation. ROAPE’s online platform keeps the struggles for racial, gender and economic equality at the centre of our focus. We aim to highlight debate on the agrarian question, rural immiseration and food sovereignty, the shifting dynamics of popular protest, the transformation of imperialism on the continent, and the role of national and international elites. We are not a substitute for African voices, but a platform for them. To find out more and read our latest contributions, go to https://roape.net/. To subscribe to the quarterly newsletter, fill in your details in the blank box next to the red ‘SUBSCRIBE’ prompt at the top of our home page. To subscribe to the ROAPE WhatsApp service, send the message ROAPE to [phone].