Geography Archives: Africa

On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: ‘Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts’.

A commemoration of the life of comrade Sekou Odinga, a lifelong New African revolutionary, former political prisoner, and unstoppable force in the Black liberation movement.

The Namibia presidency issues scathing criticism against Germany for failing to draw lessons from its genocide against the people of Namibia.

Former British diplomat Craig Murray was in the public gallery for the first day of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Here is his highly-personal account.

Hundreds flee Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza amid a deteriorating humanitarian situation across the enclave as Israel presses its assault.

Last year, for the first time on roape.net, members of ROAPE’s Editorial Group offered some of our favourite radical reads from 2022, new and old, fiction and non-fiction.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are charting a new course—one of increased economic and security sovereignty.

Mikayla Tillery reviews Kevin Okoth’s Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics. She delves into Okoth’s incisive critique of Afro-pessimism, Negritude, and the academic misinterpretations of Franz Fanon. Tillery discusses Okoth’s arguments against the idea that Marxism is Eurocentric by examining the historical suppression of Marxism in Kenya. She reveals how he highlights the contributions of black revolutionaries and reframes Marxism as a potent force for decolonisation and anti-imperialism.

Russia is negotiating with the Houthis of Yemen to protect Russian oil cargoes moving through the Red Sea for delivery to India and China, the principal destinations of Russian oil currently traversing the waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.

Culture is a vital centre of struggle. It is where people see who they are, learn what they are capable of, and dare to imagine what they would like to build in this world. Art itself does not change the world, but without bringing imagination to life through art, we would resign ourselves to the present.

Access to water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. The World Bank, Nairobi Water Company, and development economists exploited this unjust context to treat poor Kenyans like guinea pigs.

On the 60th anniversary of Kenya’s independence, Gathanga Ndung’u writes that the country has spent decades as the loyal servant of imperialism. The country may have express highways, a busy international airport, a modern railway, and an emerging silicone savannah, but in reality, Kenya seeks only to endear itself to world leaders and potential investors through well-packaged imaginaries of the present and the future. Ndung’u lists some of Kenya’s extensive betrayals – not least support for Israel and the abandonment of Palestinians.

Every year, thousands of healthcare workers leave South Africa, in order to chase better opportunities, as wealthier countries exploit desperate working conditions faced by them. This brain drain is a direct result of neoliberal policies, especially austerity.

The story of Medu is not just a South or southern African story, but an international one. No single liberation struggle can exist without the circulation and exchange of ideas, strategies, material resources, political solidarity, and culture across the globe.

Samir Amin, the late Africanist, Marxist, and revolutionary theorist, wrote in 2019: “the proletariat seems to disappear just at the moment it has become more widespread.” Samir was not wrong.

On September 6, 2023, the United States military reportedly assisted the Somali government in an deadly counter-terrorism operation that killed five civilians.

The one-million strong Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a backbone of the Brazilian left, famous for its mass actions and radical land occupations all across the Brazilian countryside.

The independence of French Indochina after the Second World War triggered a wave of independence in the French-speaking African countries, and it appeared that French colonial foundations had suffered a huge blow in the early 1960s.

The European Union has sanctioned five members of different armed groups operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including the spokesman for the M23 militia. It did not, however, sanction Rwanda, Uganda or the Rwandan and Ugandan presidents, despite decades of UN Group of Experts reports that the militias operating in the eastern DRC are largely Rwandan and Ugandan, though they typically claim to be Congolese.

Regional organizations are trying to overcome the legacy of their dependence on the West.