In her final blog in the series Lee Wengraf celebrates the life and work of Walter Rodney, the scholar, working class militant and revolutionary from Guyana who was murdered 37 years ago. His book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains a classic that must be carefully...
John Pilger exposes how the West is both fighting Islamic jihadist terrorism and using it for its own foreign policy objectives. The Manchester bomb was the result. Pilger shows how the British and French-led 2011 Nato offensive in Libya has strengthened Islamic terrorism in the...
The Rwandan government has used its record on poverty reduction and economic growth to legitimize its authoritarian rule and to deflect criticism of its human rights record, just as the previous regime had done up until 1990. Yet as this blogpost shows despite official statistics...
Ndongo Samba Sylla argues that the CFA franc - officially created on 26 December 1945 by a decree of General de Gaulle - used across much of Africa today is a colonial relics. For those hoping to export competitive products, obtain affordable credit, work for...
Africa as an ‘issue’ for global economic ‘growth’ – managed by imperialist elites – dates to an earlier Berlin project: the infamous “Scramble for Africa” in 1884-85. Patrick Bond sees similar processes at work in the recent World Economic Forum – Africa conference held last...
Fadekemi Abiru explores the growth miracle of the East Asian Tigers, always posited as prime examples of developmental states. Yet the failure to identify developmental states, she argues, in sub-Saharan Africa has caused many to fear that these Asian instances may never be replicated again....
Gretta Digbeu argues that domestic resource mobilization, which was a major preoccupation for early development economists in the period before the neoliberal counter-revolution, has become an increasingly pressing issue for African countries in the context of financial liberalization, rising external debt and capital flight. ...
In the second part of his blog on Libya, Garry Littlejohn looks at Gaddafi’s plans to establish a pan-African currency independent of the French ‘African’ franc (CFA). It was these plans, he argues, that posed a serious threat to Western interests on the continent; his...
For too long growth has not been seen for what it is: an ideology invented to defend capitalism. In this blog Franklin Obeng-Odoom looks at the consequences for Africa of this deception. He argues that economics has attained its imperial status not because of strong...
In the forth in a series of blogs for roape.net, writer and activist Lee Wengraf explores China’s recent investment and engagement in Africa. China, she argues, is no kinder, gentler imperial option: just like 19th century colonialists, when the Chinese build roads and schools, the...