Dirk Kohnert considers the consequences of Brexit for Africa and sees the possibility of a revitalisation of the corrupt, murky French network, known as Françafrique, developing and expanding across the continent. ...
In this review of R.W. Johnson’s latest book on South Africa, Fighting for the Dream, David Seddon commends an analysis that criticises the ANC as having learned little or nothing from the experience of African nationalism elsewhere on the continent. Although Johnson adopts an approach that explicitly draws on the Marxist tradition, Seddon argues that the ‘top-down’ perspective he adopts does not allow him to see the ordinary people of South Africa as actors and agents in contemporary politics. ...
We bring together five researchers who are speaking at the European Conference on African Studies in Edinburgh, Scotland, to discuss capitalism, money and commercialisation. Marine Al Dahdah explains that sub-Saharan Africa has been at the epicentre of mobile money and an experimental terrain for the mobile economy. Adam Rodgers Johns argues that the entry of capital into Tanzanian football has been embraced by local actors as a positive move towards greater professionalisation and legitimacy, but all is not as it seems. Olivier Graefe and Antje Schlottmann look at the complexity of commercialisation of wildlife in Namibia and the implications for humans, nature, and animals. Fatimah Kelleher argues that consumerist interpretations of market access as a panacea for African women's income inequality present ethical concerns that need an urgent feminist response. All authors look at the commercialisation of previously-less-commercialised sectors as key developments in neoliberal Africa. ...
The rise of a global technology industry to support financial services, known as fin-tech, has grown enormously in Africa in the last decade. Across the continent many commentators have proclaimed fin-tech as the solution to poverty and development. Examining the case of Kenya’s celebrated fin-tech model, M-Pesa, Milford Bateman, Maren Duvendack and Nicholas Loubere reveal a flawed system that is not an answer to poverty, despite the wild claims of some academic commentators. Quite the contrary, fin-tech offers Africa a further case study of how contemporary capitalism continues to under-develop Africa....
In this review of Congolese-born Belgian artist Baloji’s short film ‘Zombies’, Thandi Loewenson celebrates a seductive and mesmerising tour de force that stirs up the fighting spirit in a people and a continent that has resisted colonial and capitalist extinction. This powerful, haunting review is written with Baloji’s lyrics, videos and ideas which weave through the text – linked in italics....
In a long-standing campaign against the activities of a gold mining company in Burkina Faso, the community has mounted consistent resistance to forced removals, repression, arbitrary arrests and the devastation of livelihoods. In this appeal for solidarity we ask our readers to support the community with any form of support. ...
In ROAPE’s final Connections workshop in Johannesburg in December last year we discussed the dynamics of resistance and transformation on the continent. In this blogpost we publish interviews with participants which provides an extraordinary account of the workshop and the struggles, politics and research of the activists who attended....
In a review of Hakim Adi’s Pan-Africanism: A History Mpumelelo Tshabalala celebrates a seminal work on the ideology and content of Pan-Africanism, that also describes the nature and extent of its organisational capacity. Tshabalala sees in the book how ‘Black people all over the world were able − despite state-sponsored repression, erasure, opposition and political assassinations – to network and organise around a Pan-African agenda.’...
In a wide-ranging interview for roape.net Tamás Gerőcs speaks to the Nigerian Marxist Femi Aborisade. From his early days as a labour militant in the 1970s and 1980s, organsing and building socialist and labour organisations, Aborisade discusses the crisis of capitalism in Nigeria today and the struggles against it....
Reviewing a major new book on Uganda’s neoliberal transformation, Daniel Lumonya writes that the volume is ‘a deep and comprehensive engagement with the dynamics of development in contemporary Uganda.’ Speaking at the launch of the book in Kampala in April, Lumonya was joined by one of the editors of the book and an audience of scholars and activists from Uganda. The launch was filmed for roape.net and the footage available in the blogpost....