Review of African Political Economy ROAPE

Established by a group of scholars and activists in the UK and Africa, the journal is committed to understanding projects of radical transformation. From the state-led attempts at political transformation in Tanzania to the later wave of independence in Mozambique and Angola. ROAPE sought to analyse the contradictions, potentials and emerging class dynamic in these countries. Later, in the 1980s, the journal focused on understanding the development of protest movements and the nature of the class struggle in the context of structural adjustment that was tearing up the fragile edifice of national states. As the continent has evolved in the 1990s and 2000s, we have continued to focus on patterns and processes of accumulation – local and national – while examining class, gender and race as forms of exploitation, domination and subordination.

ROAPE is fully independent, and completely open access. They depend on subscriptions an donations from their readers and supporters to maintain their radical coverage of African political economy (please sign up here and donate here). Full open access to the journals articles and research papers can be found here.

Roape.net, like the journal, pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression and to organised struggles against them, whether these inequities are driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, ethnicity and gender. It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation. ROAPE is different from other journals because of its significance in countering neo-liberal dogma in the analysis of different country cases and with its focus on social movements and transformations. ROAPE believes that another world is possible.

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. They do not seek to become a substitute for African voices, but a sounding board and platform for them.

ROAPE offers an agenda of radical political economy that is not only critique but also explores the possibilities of an alternative in the continental projects and movements that have attempted (or are attempting) to build one. They believe that they remain at the cutting edge of debates on African political economy through their continued focus on the agrarian question, rural immiseration dramatised by the food sovereignty debates, the shifting dynamics of popular protest, the transformation of imperialism on the continent, the role of national and international elites and a critical analysis of failed projects for radical change on the continent.