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Long Reads

Our full journal articles are published in the quarterly journal and can be accessed through Taylor and Francis (and on our archive page of this site). However, on roape.net we post long reads (up to 4,500 words) on a range of historical and political-economic issues on the continent.

We welcome submissions on focused, thoughtful and controversial issues about African political economy and the wider impact of international development on Africa’s development, history and politics.

Climate Emergency

Migration and climate emergency in North Africa

ROAPE - November 10, 2022

Climate Emergency

Being excess bodies: Shame in the age of climate coloniality

ROAPE - November 8, 2022

Long Read

‘Everybody to the Rice Harvest!’ – a speech by Samora Machel in June 1978

ROAPE - October 5, 2022

Blog

More than a moment – The achievements of Black Lives Matter

Conference Reports

Reading Walter Rodney in occupied Azania

Imperialism in the 21st Century

The CIA versus the UN in the Congo: The covert delivery of fighter jets to Katanga in 1961

Blog

Coups, insurgency, and imperialism in Africa

Colonialism is alive and well in Africa, but goes by many nice names

ROAPE - January 26, 2022

Yusuf Serunkuma asks how the continued and violent colonisation of the continent has not been more systematically resisted. In a long-read, Serunkuma looks at the extraordinary control of the continent, from banking, the coffee trade, land grabs and mining. Why have Africans failed to see these forms of foreign control as ‘colonial,’ in which former colonisers have continued the pillage of the continent?

The workers’ movement, revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt

ROAPE - November 17, 2021

Mostafa Bassiouny and Anne Alexander explain that discussions of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 rarely mention the workers’ movement, focusing instead on the idea...

‘It hasn’t fallen yet, the rule is military still’: Lessons from the Sudanese revolution

ROAPE - October 27, 2021

In the context of the coup in Sudan, Muzan Alneel analyses the Sudanese revolution and the role of the transitionary government. She argues that the deep unpopularity of the now overthrown government sponsored by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, internationally financed, was an expression of both the economic and political counterrevolutions.

Ethnonationalism, imperialism and the working class in Ethiopia

ROAPE - September 21, 2021

Since November last year, Ethiopia has been fighting a devastating civil war with the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. Hibist Kassa argues that the scale of misinformation on the war, lack of context and attempts to impose false narratives is deeply troubling and pervasive. Kassa calls for a nuanced and historically grounded approach to properly analyse the course of events.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Yoweri Museveni

ROAPE - July 27, 2021

In this long-read, Liam Taylor explores the politics and class dynamics of Kampala, Uganda. Taylor unpicks the enigma of Yoweri Museveni’s background - a former student militant who was taught by Walter Rodney, and argued for the necessity of revolutionary violence, socialism and radical transformations. Yet he soon became the apostle of neoliberal change, always promising that real change was forthcoming.

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