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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.

Pritish Behuria writes how Mauritius has long impressed observers. In July this year, the country was officially categorised as a high-income country. Yet alongside impressive growth, Mauritius’ financial sector has developed into a globally renowned low-tax jurisdiction.

Last year a wave of militant protests spread across North Africa and West Asia, in a sustained, historic series of popular struggles. Emma Wilde Botta reviews A Region in Revolt: Mapping the Recent Uprisings in North Africa and West Asia edited by Jade Saab.

If the consequences of the current pandemic are global, discussions about alternatives have not lived up to this reality, failing to learn from the non-Western world and from indigenous and popular struggles in the Global South. Join a roundtable discussion on pandemic politics with Rob Wallace, Hamza Hamouchene and Lin Chun.

In 1971 and 1972 two of the most important books of the 20th century were published – volumes that have made an enormous difference to scholarship and activism. In 1971 the Uruguayan journalist and writer, Eduardo Galeano, published, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. The book has sold over a million copies and been translated into more than a dozen languages. The following year Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was published. Rodney’s book took a similar approach, examining the history of slavery and colonialism across Africa. Like Galeano, he examined how a continent was driven back – ‘underdeveloped’ – by European occupation and economic control. In this blogpost, Brian M. Napoletano, Héctor Ignacio Martínez Alvarez and Pedro S. Urquijo look again at Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America – next week we will be examining the context and content of Rodney’s 1972 masterpiece. 

Namibia celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its independence from South Africa in March 2020, today the country is on fire. Heike Becker writes about the Namibian activists, students, working youth, and artists who have taken to the streets of Windhoek and other towns in the past few weeks.

The mass protests in Nigeria have brought out tens of thousands of people in several cities across all the geo-political regions of the country, defying the guns, risking their freedom and life, and declaring they are ready to die for freedom. Femi Aborisade and Salvador Ousmane look at the background to the protests and celebrate a movement that challenges Nigeria’s ruling class.

In a clarion call for support and solidarity for the struggle of teachers in Zimbabwe, Tafadzwa Choto argues that there is now talk of a general strike to solve the long-standing crisis in the country. Government and bosses have declared war on workers, vendors, students, youths and the poor. There must be a militant riposte.

This blogpost is about a new social movement, the C-19 People’s Coalition (C19PC) that has developed in South Africa in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Activist and researcher, Kate Alexander examines the Coalition’s Gauteng Community Organising Working Group. She highlights the issue of hunger as the government’s chief failing and as a spur for social movement organising.