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Continuing her series of interviews with radical African feminists, Rama Salla Dieng speaks to Jessica Horn. As a poet and activist, Jessica describes her involvement in feminist groups and movements on the continent, and how repressive economic and political structures must be changed to enable woman to genuinely thrive.

In the third interview in the series, Talking Back, Rama Salla Dieng speaks to Divine Fuh. Divine Fuh talks about his research on the economic, political, religious and social crises in Cameroon and how young men have been forced to create new criteria for endorsement as ‘successful men’ with the collapse of salaried achievement. In a wide-ranging interview he also discusses his work with CODESRIA in Dakar, fathering, feminism, masculinity, Afrophobia and social anthropology.

In the second interview in the series, Talking Back, Rama Salla Dieng speaks to Hilina Berhanu and Aklile Solomon about the feminist movement in Ethiopia. Founders of The Yellow Movement at Addis Ababa University, they speak about Ethiopia’s patriarchal society, the momentary hope in the new government and their continued activism across the country.

In a wide-ranging interview with Lyn Ossome, Rama Salla Dieng and Françoise Kpeglo Moudouthe discuss her politics and activism. Ossome argues that the maintenance of a façade of stability in societies across Africa has depended on the exploitation, super-exploitation, discrimination and violations of women and gendered bodies more broadly.

Rama Salla Dieng introduces a series of interviews with African feminists that roape.net will be posting in the coming weeks. In recent months across Africa we have witnessed women taking to the street to reclaim a fairer and more just world. In these protests and movements woman have often played a leading role. In interviews conducted by Rama, young African feminists will discuss how they are theorising their practice and philosophies.

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.

In a passionate defence of the strike action of university workers in the UK, ROAPE’s Rama Salla Dieng describes the intolerable pressures on teaching staff and the gender and ethnic inequalities within the academy. Dieng writes, ‘We are on strike to resist the marketisation of our knowledge and lives, and to build radical solidarities with our students.’

To discuss the extraordinary events in Sudan and Algeria that have shaken these countries – and the continent – to the core in recent months, roape.net has asked some of our contributors to debate the significance and meaning of these revolutions. Both countries are confronted by a challenge: are the movements pacified in the interests of the local and global ruling classes or do the revolutionary movements successfully take-on and overturn these deep-rooted and brutal states. The contributions below look at the challenges faced by these revolutions  and the possibilities of creating lasting and fundamental transformation.

In memory of his father, who passed away earlier in October, Yusuf Serunkuma offers a heartfelt political reflection on his father’s unfulfilled dreams since Uganda’s independence in 1962.  Recounting the story of his father's dismissal from a textile factory in the early 1990s, he illustrates the devastating impact of the neoliberal austerity policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on the lives of ordinary Ugandans. These imperialist interventions dismantled the material progress and aspirations of the generation that won independence, and continue to suppress the hopes of both present and future generations.

Before the mass revolt in Kenya spread countrywide in June, it had started in the informal settlement area of Mathare, in Nairobi, following forced evictions after flooding in the area. Wairimu Gathimba writes about how this wave of brutal action in the city was simply the latest in a long history of brutal evictions. Gathimba looks at the long struggle by residents to remain in the city in the face of such evictions, and what we can learn from their battle to keep their homes.