The world has an oligarchy problem.

Ten years after one student’s bold action a month earlier inspired protests which led to the removal of Cecil John Rhodes’ statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Heike Becker recounts this historical occasion by linking this as well as subsequent and earlier protests to broader conversations about decolonization and concerns about racism, marginalization and inequality.

Matthew Quest questions why C.L.R. James is not widely recognized as a founder of African Studies.

Presenting new research, Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel mount a devastating critique of the impact of structural adjustment in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on recent data on Africa’s material resource use, Sullivan and Hickel show how during this period structural adjustment programmes led to a significant increase in ‘unequal ecological exchange’, a process whereby African countries were compelled to export more materials, energy, and other resources than they received in imports. The difference between the two, Sullivan and Hickel argue, represented a transfer of real tangible materials from Africa to the capitalist world economy, for free.

In this interview, Mamadou Koné, curator at the Musée historique des forces armées du Sénégal, looks back at the long history of the Senegalese riflemen, the African troops employed by the French army during the colonial period.

ROAPE’s Peter Dwyer interviews the South African socialist David Hemson. Hemson was a leading labour militant and trade unionist during the mass working class uprising and strikes in Durban in 1973. In this introduction to the videoed interviews, Peter Dwyer discusses working class politics and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a history often forgotten or marginalised in popular accounts.

Writing for ROAPE, Thelma Arko argues that while often presented as a solution to the climate emergency, the growth of carbon offset markets are fueling a new scramble for African land and perpetuating colonial-era exploitation. We must move beyond market-based solutions, Arko urges, to embrace strategies that centre on social equity, ecological integrity, and the rights of local communities.

ROAPE’s Ray Bush introduces Volume 51 Issue 181 of the journal, a special 50th anniversary issue on imperialism and Africa.

Lumumba had seen hope in the African diaspora to invest what capital and skills it had in building the Congo. Arghiri Emmanuel made similar recommendations to Antoine Gizenga, Lumumba’s former deputy prime minister who led the rebel socialist Free Republic of Congo from December 12th 1960 to January 1962.

Writing about Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange, Jairus Banaji noted that it is “the closest Marxist counterpart I can think of to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth”.

In 1974, 50 years ago, the newly launched Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) journal boldly announced its intentions in the first editorial, “Appropriate analysis and the devising of a strategy for Africa’s revolution must be encouraged and we hope that the provision of this platform for discussion will assist that process”.

We are told that Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a powerful tool for advancing democratic concerns and human rights across Africa. Yet, there are also early indicators that AI could undermine democratic institutions and processes, especially if these technologies prioritise colonial-capitalist development trajectories. Scott Timcke looks at some of the issues at stake.

For the first time in South Africa’s 30 years of democracy, the African National Congress (ANC) failed to obtain a majority of votes making a coalition with other parties imminent. Luke Sinwell considers the consequences, and discusses the emergence of a new party, MK, led by Jacob Zuma. Sinwell looks at what has happened to the left, and its repeated failure to make any serious inroads into South Africa’s political scene.

Israel, as a settler colony, perceives Palestine as ‘empty land’, empty of people, culture, history and a future. Busani Ngcaweni argues that Palestinians are denied an identity and have become dis-membered, without a home, state or nation. There are striking similarities, Ngcaweni explains, between Israel’s ideology of racial subjugation by a ‘God-chosen people’ and apartheid South Africa’s belief in racial and religious superiority over an inferior black race.

ROAPE interviews Mark Duffield about his life and work.

The Central African Republic has, despite being at the centre of the continent, been a country on the margins of global power since independence. Despite a conflict which has lasted for more than a decade, the country remains largely ignored. Ben Jackson writes that while African conflicts are often underreported, for example the war in Sudan barely gets a mention, the situation in the Central African Republic demands our attention.

One hundred years since Lenin’s death, Nigerian socialist Abiodun Olamosu describes of the revolutionary on his own political development. As the preeminent organiser of the Russian revolution, Lenin helped to determine the course of Olamosu’s life in Nigeria. Olamosu explores the development of Lenin’s work and legacy. He regards Stalin’s rise to power, and the Soviet Union, as an abomination to the body of ideas of Marxism and socialist internationalism.

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.

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.

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.