Rwanda poverty - search results

In a far-reaching long-read for ROAPE, writer and commentator Yusuf Serunkuma argues that ‘democracy’ in Africa is not just a language of (colonial) exploitation, it is the practice of exploitation itself. Our challenge today, is to understand the colonial nature of this democracy - divide and rule, shameless free markets, foreign aid, and loans & media bombardment - and the myriad, so-called good-intentioned crusaders who promote it.

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.

Issue 118

Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Western Kenya, Mario Schmidt argues that local interpretations of GiveDirectly’s unconditional cash transfer program unmask how the NGO’s ‘myth of unconditionality’ obscures structural inequalities of the development aid sector. Schmidt argues that in order to tackle these structural inequalities, cash transfers should be ‘ungifted’ and viewed as debts repaid and not as gifts offered.

Nnimmo Bassey calls for us to pay attention to the disastrous impacts of climate change already being experienced in Africa. The need for action demands that the continent breaks with the futile dash to be like the rich, industrialised and polluting nations and interrogate the notion of development and growth in a finite world. Real action must start now.

ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig looks at a year that has seen two astonishing uprisings in Africa, and protest movements that have rippled across the globe. The first, in Sudan, started in the small city of Atbara in December last year. The second major event of the year was the climate strikes around the world. Though these protests were smaller in Africa, the continent remains deeply affected by the consequences of human-made climate change. Zeilig asks what a radical journal and website like ROAPE can do?

Looking at the case of Chile and Yemen, Tebeje Molla argues that the neoliberal policies advocated by Ethiopia’s new leader and made under a condition of political shock is profoundly dangerous for the country and must be resisted.

The first decade of the 21st century marked a new beginning for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After the signing of a peace treaty in 2002, the country re-connected with the world to engage in post-conflict reconstruction. In this blogpost, the authors ask who really benefitted from the ensuing peace dividend? By re-examining the evidence, they conclude that the country missed an important opportunity to combat the country’s devastating poverty.

After the manifest failure of microcredit to address poverty in Africa and everywhere else, the international development community has hit upon a new microcredit-related idea that, it claims, will do the job this time around: ‘fin-tech’, i.e. financial technology. In this blogpost Milford Bateman argues fin-tech has the potential to gravely undermine the position of the poor and to increase inequality while, not coincidentally, vastly enriching a narrow elite.

As Donald Trump makes his first visit to the UK as president, Dirk Kohnert looks at how his policies will hit African countries. After years of talk of partnership for African economic development Trump’s tariffs mean a severe blow to African trade and sustainable development. Kohnert argues that Egypt and South Africa for example, potentially the most affected countries in Africa, face massive job losses.