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ROAPE’s Peter Dwyer introduces new members of the journal’s editorial working group. He welcomes a new generation, Leona Vaughn, Chinedu Chukwudinma and Njuki Githethwa, who are activists from the African diaspora and those implanted in Africa. In a personal, political and scholarly sense, Dwyer argues, they will irrevocably change ROAPE.

In the sands of the arena, gladiators embodying colonial and decolonial modes of thought are locked in academic combat, exchanging blows of disciplinary conquest, identity and self-styled objectivity versus self-awareness and epistemic revolution. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, describing such a combat, reignites important questions and sets out to open our eyes to the battle lines, and the weapons that are available to defeat gladiatorial scholarship – the moment to learn to unlearn is upon us, he writes.

ROAPE’s Janet Bujra reviews a major new book on climate change. Jonathan Neale’s book, Fight the Fire: Green New Deal and Climate Jobs, goes beyond the symptoms of climate change and focusses on the causes. These are to be found in the scientific facts, but equally relevant, the social relations of globalizing capitalism. Neale calls for a global mass movement that can confront the forces that are destroying the planet.

Introducing ROAPE’s special issue on Samir Amin (available to access for free until 31/03 - see links in blogpost), the editors, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Maria Dyveke Styve, Ushehwedu Kufakurinani and Ray Bush, argue Amin’s legacy provides a lighthouse for those who not only want to understand the world, but fundamentally change it, by combining rigorous scholarship with political commitment and action.

As large protests have rocked Senegal, the government has used live fire and militias to crush the movement. A collective of Senegalese artists and academics calls for President Macky Sall to be held accountable for his crimes.

Africa Is a Country’s William Shoki presents a newly established interview series, AIAC Talk. The weekly show, co-hosted by Shoki and Sean Jacobs, seeks to take advantage of the migration of life online to reach captive audiences and occupy an important space to talk about the world from an African perspective.

From the editorial of the latest issue of ROAPE, Elisa Greco provides an excoriating denunciation of Africa’s underdevelopment in the context of the pandemic. Unpicking the political strategy of neo-extractivism, she argues that every global recession, or primary commodity prices downturn, African economies which bought into this model succumb to crisis and recession.

Continuing our series of interviews with scholar-activists from around the world, David Seddon reflects on popular struggles, politics and global adjustment in Africa and the world. Reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the North African revolutions, he argues that struggle takes place when the structural contradictions and inadequacies of the prevailing economic, social and political system are starkly revealed – the current period is one of these junctures.

For five years ROAPE’s website has tried to reinvigorate scholar activism in and about Africa. We continue to be an important resource for radical political economy in Africa, and to build deeper connections with activists and researchers. In a new initiative this year, we are launching a bimonthly Newsletter, run by Ben Radley, and offering a roundup of all the fresh content posted on the site in the previous two months.

Unpicking the war that has broken out in Ethiopia between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the central authority represented by Prime Minister Abiy, Martin Plaut explains the background and devastating consequences of the war for all Ethiopians.