Barbara Bompani takes aim at the dominant narrative that rising homophobia in Africa is the result of external actors, and in particular US conservative Christian groups. Drawing from more than a decade of research and analysis, she argues rising homophobia is not simply the result of external influence, but is shaped by the complex role religion has played in shaping new forms of nationalisms on the continent. What we are observing in several African countries, she contends, is the emergence of a new politics that threatens untold and profound harm to LGBT communities.

ROAPE’s Mike Powell introduces a selection of Amílcar Cabral’s writings, speeches, and interviews. Cabral was one of the most important revolutionaries of the 20th century who led and founded a movement which not only led to the liberation of Guinea Bissau but prepared the ground for a revolution in the colonial power itself. This selection of Cabral’s speeches and interviews, and other writings, is provided in the hope that some readers will find in them inspiration and hope for the revolutionary struggles to come.

Contributing to the ongoing discussion of the conflict over Laascaanood in Somaliland, Markus Hoehne critically engages with Jamal Abdi’s earlier arguments about the matter. Hoehne argues that what is at stake in the conflict over Laascaanood is the question of Somaliland’s secession versus the unity of Somalia. This conflict has been smoldering for a long time. The UK seems to play an increasingly neo-colonial role in this conflict, with British politicians and diplomats siding with the government in Hargeysa while a British oil company is investigating oil prospects in central Somaliland.

ROAPE celebrates the life and work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who turned 85 in January this year. To mark the occasion, we share an extract on Ngũgĩ’s early novel A Grain of Wheat (1967), adapted from Sarah Jilani’s forthcoming book Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film. Jilani explores Anglophone and Francophone post-independence texts (1950s–1980s) from Africa and South Asia to consider what ‘decolonising the mind’ could mean, and entail. Guided by the thought of Frantz Fanon, the book demonstrates how a selection of literary and cinematic narratives from this period help us understand the transformation of subjectivities themselves as a part of the broader, unfinished project that is decolonisation.

Isaac Samuel is an independent researcher whose work focuses on African history and economics. His prolific output on pre-colonial African history can be found on his blog AfricanHistoryExtra, which as a collective body of extraordinary scholarship puts the lie to the still widely held belief that – in the words of esteemed University of Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Rope in the 1960s – there is no African history, “only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness”. Here, in a blistering account, Samuel shows how German philosopher Georg Hegel – one of the most influential figures of 19th century philosophy – wilfully misinterpreted first-hand accounts of the Asante kingdom from the 18th century. The result, both in the work of Hegel and those who followed him, was the construction of an absurdly fictional account of African society, steeped in popular beliefs of his time about the continent’s supposed backwardness, that deliberately subsumed the richness and complexity of Asante history in order to legitimate imperial expansion and colonial rule.