Lars Cornelissen offers an extract from his recent book “Neoliberalism and Race”, which argues that race functions as an organizing principle of neoliberal ideology. Drawing on intellectual history and critical race studies, he traces both explicit and coded racial constructs within neoliberal thought from the interwar period to the present. The book shows that racial themes have consistently shaped neoliberalism, to the extent that its racial motifs cannot be removed without rendering it theoretically and politically incoherent.

This radical supplement to the editorial of ROAPE’s Fanon special issue raises awareness of how Fanon’s ideas, in the year of his centenary, continue to provoke fear and anxiety within the Western imperialist political establishment, especially as his work gains renewed prominence among pro-Palestinian activists. It provides Sarah Jilani, one of the contributors to this special issue, with the space to respond to a 2025 policy report published by the British Conservative think tank Policy Exchange, titled After Gaza: Fanon and His Acolytes, which includes a footnote mocking Jilani while insulting Fanon’s legacy.

In this piece, Brian Mathenge pays tribute to Pio Gama Pinto, a journalist and freedom fighter with a dedication to the ideals of an equal society. Pinto was tragically killed 60 years ago, during a time when he vehemently opposed the class stratification, inequalities and oppression which endured from colonial to postcolonial Kenya.

In her thought-provoking blog, Celiwe Mxhalisa shines light on how capitalism has moved beyond exploiting natural resources to commodifying its own waste and pollution. This shift has created a new form of exploited labour, termed “counter-productive labour,” exemplified by recycle-for-pay activities that extract value from the dross of capitalist production. Mxhalisa views this new exploitation as a harbinger of doom, intensifying the incoherence of a system that produces more rubbish than goods in the name of profit.

In celebration of Fanon’s centenary, we repost an interview with the Tunisian sociologist, Frej Stambouli who remembers his teacher Frantz Fanon.

In the wake of Frantz Fanon’s 100th birthday, Sam Chian offers a close reading of The Wretched of the Earth, arguing that Fanon’s primary intervention lies in his class analysis of colonial societies. He examines his critique of the national bourgeoisie and the urban working class, and his insistence on the revolutionary potential of the rural peasantry and radical intellectuals. Chian suggest that for Fanon, the social composition of the anti-colonial struggle decisively shapes the post-colonial order, and that the socialist path he outlines remains structurally constrained but politically urgent.

Mohammed Amin Abdishukri offers a compelling account of recent coordinated transnational repression targeting cross-border activism by East African activists in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya.

Geographers working in South African universities in the 1980s were part of a segregated system in which institutions were designated for each of the so-called ‘racial groups’: Black African (also divided further by language group), Coloured, Indian, and White.

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.