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ROAPE’s Hannah Cross writes that the UK government’s policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda has been ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal. Asylum seekers, the court argued, risked being returned to their home country and could face inhumane treatment and persecution. Paul Kagame’s Rwanda, with the complicity of Western media and international financial institutions, has been presented as a successful developmental state, but in reality it is a place of systematic state brutality.

Yusuf Serunkuma writes that a migrant worker dies many times, and has many killers. They die in their home countries - where they are structurally, violently uprooted -  they then die on the journeys to either Europe or the Middle East and then, they finally die in dehumanising working conditions if they ever arrive. Serunkuma exposes the hypocrisy, racism and murder at the heart of the global north.  

Kenyan activists Faith Asina and Gathanga Ndung’u deliver powerful and sharp criticism of the role of the Kenyan police as the oppressor of the masses. They explain in detail how police terror has manifested itself on issues such as the crackdowns on activists, the aftermath of elections, state-led campaigns against terrorism and informal settlements. They also take the time to commemorate fallen activists and inform us about ongoing grassroots movements against the violence of the police, which they believe needs radical surgery or a total overhaul.

Looking in detail at the issues behind COP27, ROAPE’s Ray Bush examines migration in the age of the climate emergency. The consequences of imperialism, colonialism and climate crises is the persistence of labour migration. Bush argues that the underlying cause of migration is structural inequality and its reproduction between the global north and south, which is now exacerbated by climate catastrophe.  

ROAPE's Ben Radley interviews Congolese activist Bienvenu Matumo. Matumo speaks about what led him to become an activist with Lutte Pour Le Changement (LUCHA)...

ROAPE’s Graham Harrison examines Britain's deal with Rwanda which he argues shows Western states are constructing a vast international network of refugee prisons in post-colonial countries – offshoring the wretched of the earth to a dystopian universe devoid of rights, justice, and humanity.

Graham Harrison argues that all development is capitalist development. Based on his recent book, Developmentalism, he argues that development is not only risky and likely to fail but also very unpleasant. Contemporary notions of development see it is as a stable, incremental, and positive process but this is a fantasy in which capitalist development is reimagined as a planned, inclusive, and socially just modernisation.

Anna Wolkenhauer commends a new book, Social Policy in the African Context, edited by ROAPE’s Jimi Adesina, which rescues social policy from the assault of neoliberalism by carving out the necessary space for sovereign and transformative policymaking that can tackle the “root causes” of social problems. With its timely and important intervention into the debates on radical social policy in Africa, this collection, she argues, contributes a significant step forward.

In an interview with Yusuf Serunkuma, ROAPE asks him about his forthcoming book on oil, capitalists, and livelihoods in western Uganda. The book is a co-edited volume with Eria Serwajja and brings together six junior Ugandan scholars and activists.  Serunkuma details the struggles of rural people to confront and harmonise interests with oil explorers, with environmental destruction and compensation that has turned lives upside down  

Reviewing a new book, the Congolese historian, Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, asks how Africa was demonisation by non-Africans, and Westerners in particular, to generate the hatred and discrimination against Black Africans and their descendants until today? Nzongola-Ntalaja writes that Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media by Milton Allimadi provides excellent answers to this question, with powerful examples of institutionalised racism from major Western media.