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ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence writes how Covid-19 has hit capitalism when it was already confronting systemic problems. The pandemic has helped to connect the dots between environmental degradation and the development of global capitalism. Lawrence argues that only with organised pressure from below can a way through be found.

Despite cosmetic rebranding, the World Bank continues its decades-long work of pushing power into the hands of private capital. Sean Taylor explains how the Covid-19 response is being used to further the Bank's role of acting as a private investment broker in the Global South.

ROAPE’s Reginald Cline-Cole provides an analytically rigorous understanding of the differentiated spread and impact of Covid-19 around the world. In so doing he returns us to what ought to be our core concern: the political economy of uneven incorporation of African economies, societies and natures into the world economy.

ROAPE is hosting a webinar which is being jointly organised with Third World Network-Africa on the long-term implications of increasing digitisation and population surveillance in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Habib Ayeb writes how the global pandemic is a direct result of the neoliberal model of production, which is based on the assumption of the superiority of human beings over nature. The consequences are tragically diverse – from the extinction of bees, one of the most important links in the ecological chain – to the emergence of deadly new viruses. Assessing the public health response to Covid-19 in Tunisia, Ayeb argues that we must seek an alternative to capitalism before the system attempts to relaunch the processes of accumulation.

For years ROAPE has examined Africa’s evolving political economy, including food production and the activity of multinational corporations, land grabs, mining and the displacement of communities, class struggles and elite accumulation.

David Seddon looks in detail at the reported impact of Covid-19 in North Africa. The region has currently experienced some of the largest numbers of reported cases and the greatest number of deaths on the continent. Seddon also asks how we can understand the response of international and national financial institutions to the outbreak on the continent.

In an update on the Covid-19 pandemic across Africa, Heike Becker, Femi Aborisade and Issa Shivji, report on the reaction of governments, the struggles of poor communities and the urgency of building of a new world out of the ruins of the old.

ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig and Hannah Cross ask if the experience of life with the Covid-19 outbreak is the common experience of life and death in the South. They argue that now is the moment to build unity behind an alternative social structure to capitalism in Africa and the Global North.

Activists and researchers from across Africa speak about the impact of Covid-19 on their countries. Writing from Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Nigeria and Zimbabwe, Femi Aborisade, Heike Becker, Didier Kiendrebeogo, Gacheke Gachihi, Lena Anyuolo and Tafadzwa Choto look at how the crisis is taking shape – how governments are using the virus as a cover for wider repression, and the broader context of capitalism, climate change and popular struggles for radical change.