Action for Southern Africa’s report, The Money Drain: How Trade Misinvoicing and Unjust Debt Undermine Economic and Social Rights in Southern Africa, was recently launched at the Southern African Development Community People’s Summit in Dar es Salaam. For roape.net, the report’s author, Sunit Bagree, outlines some of the actions that the UK government must take in order to end these damaging financial outflows....
In the first of a series of blogposts on the extraordinary revolutions we have seen across Africa this year, Emma Wilda Botta examines the roots of the uprisings in Sudan. After decades of repression, the Sudanese people rose up in 2018-19, but the compromises that have temporarily pacified the country’s towns and cities, rest on a set of acute contradictions....
Recently the Financial Times published an investigation carried out by their data analysis team, which confirmed the findings that have been published on roape.net on poverty in Rwanda over several years. Of all the countries in the world for which there is data, only South Sudan has experienced a faster increase in poverty over the past decade. Rwanda’s official poverty statistics are verifiably false. The government, supported by the World Bank, is involved in a tragic debacle in which the poor are the real victims. ...
Looking at the case of Chile and Yemen, Tebeje Molla argues that the neoliberal policies advocated by Ethiopia’s new leader and made under a condition of political shock is profoundly dangerous for the country and must be resisted....
In the latest exposé of Rwanda’s poverty statistics, our experts reveal the methodical faking of statistical evidence. Until now the working assumption had been that this was a methodological disagreement with the figures but in the end it turns out to be a simple, straightforward (and easy to prove) case of fake statistics. The only reason it has taken so long to prove the manipulation is that our experts had not imagined the possibility that Rwandan authorities might have misreported their own results. This blogpost includes the excel files which will allow everyone, including non-experts, to check the findings. This also means that it will be impossible for the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda and the World Bank to keep denying the evidence. Heads will have to roll....
The first decade of the 21st century marked a new beginning for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After the signing of a peace treaty in 2002, the country re-connected with the world to engage in post-conflict reconstruction. In this blogpost, the authors ask who really benefitted from the ensuing peace dividend? By re-examining the evidence, they conclude that the country missed an important opportunity to combat the country’s devastating poverty....
ROAPE’s Patrick Bond looks at the context for the 14-17 January nationwide protests in Zimbabwe. The protests were called by trade unions against an unprecedented fuel price hike, leading to repression, death, injuries and mass arrests reminiscent of former leader Robert Mugabe’s rule. Bond unpicks what he argues is a full-on capitalist crisis....
Introducing a new collection on neoliberal restructuring in Uganda, the editors argue in this blogpost that the country has been a hotspot for capitalist restructuring, transformation, contradiction and crisis, past and present. Uganda has undergone an unprecedented political, socio-economic, cultural and ecological transformation, brought about by neoliberal capitalist reorganisation since the 1980s. Rather than seeing a post neoliberal world they argue that there is much more to come....
Continuing our exposé of the Rwandan government’s subterfuge (and World Bank and IMF complicity) roape.net’s expert reveals what is really going on behind the states recent poverty statistics. This blogpost finds an increase in poverty which is too large, too sustained, too wide-spread, and the findings too robust and too compelling to be ignored, or to be dismissed as mere statistical blips or methodological quirks. The evidence published on roape.net, shows that as the government continues to spend its meagre resources on unprofitable five-star hotels, empty skyscrapers, and even the president’s favourite football club, and imprisons or kills anyone who dares to question the official narrative of success, the lives of ordinary Rwandans continues to deteriorate. Following years of controversy surrounding the results of the EICV4 survey (the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey or Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des ménages), the National Institute of statistics...
Mpumelelo Tshabalala discusses a symposium that marked the 60th anniversary of the All Africa People’s Conference which was hosted at the University of London last month. The symposium created the space for reflection on the historical significance of the 1958 AAPC and on how it can be used to understand and shape where Africa is today. Tshabalala also raises some important questions about race and politics at the event. By Mpumelelo Tshabalala On Thursday, 6 December 2018 the All Africa People’s Conference’s (AAPC) 60-year commemorative event took place in one of Senate House Library’s grand, parliamentary styled rooms. The symposium was incredibly rich, evident in the effort made to set and comprehend the context of the original conference in 1958. Further to the presented content, accompanying the programme was a list of the AAPC’s delegates, fraternal delegates and observers, a 1958 map of the continent and information...