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Heike Becker explores the development of an extraordinary new protest movement in Namibia. Affirmative Repositioning is a movement of urban youth, which took off from a spectacular and audacious occupation of a piece of land in an affluent suburb of Windhoek in November 2014.

In April 2024, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of ROAPE and the 10th anniversary of www.roape.net, Ebb Books published Voices for African Liberation: Conversations with the Review of African Political Economy. The edited collection presents 38 interviews with African and Africanist socialists conducted by the Review of African Political Economy between 2015 and 2023, bringing to life older voices of liberation and lost radical histories alongside newer initiatives, projects, and activists who are engaged in the contemporary struggles to reshape Africa – to make, win, and sustain a revolutionary transformation in our devastated world. Here, we publish the book's introductory chapter.

While revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe, the United States and Latin America have been the subject of abundant literature, similar movements that emerged in Africa have received comparatively little attention. In an extract from their forthcoming book, the editors, Pascal Bianchini, Ndongo Sylla and Leo Zeilig shed new light on these political movements. They argue that Africa’s revolutionary left was extremely active in these years, and forms a vital part of global history.

Ambreena Manji argues that we need a better understanding of home, labour and inequality in the pandemic and that feminist thought is central to a just future. Focusing on the Global South, she argues that women have borne the brunt of the violence directed towards the homes of working people.

Last week ROAPE and BIEA organised a webinar on the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa. Activists and researchers from around the continent discussed the impact of the measures taken against the coronavirus by the ruling classes. In this blogpost we introduce the full video recording of the meeting with all of the speakers, Tafadzwa Choto, Femi Aborisade, Gacheke Gachihi, Lena Anyuolo, Gyekye Tanoh and Heike Becker.  

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.

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.

In a report on a recent conference in Dakar on the Revolutionary Left in sub-Saharan Africa, Adam Mayer celebrates a gathering of activists and researchers, which could not have been more different from the mega-conferences of academia today. The conference examined the extraordinary vibrancy of left politics and movements across the continent in the 1960s and 1970s.

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.

Continuing our look at the life of Steve Biko, Heike Becker writes about two extraordinary events. The first was the formation of a Black...