ROAPE on Food Sovereignty, ODA and Regime Transitions

This IOCSS note reviews recent and foundational interventions from the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) on aid, food sovereignty and regime transition. The common thread is a warning against treating development as a technical package detached from power, ownership and historical memory.

Food security, seed sovereignty and the politics of agricultural aid

James Akpu’s recent ROAPE essay on the colonial potato and Africa’s contemporary seed wars places agricultural ODA in a longer political history. The issue is not simply whether improved seeds raise yields. The deeper question is who controls seed systems, who benefits from input packages, and whether donor-backed reforms weaken local seed knowledge and smallholder autonomy.

Read alongside Rick Rowden’s argument that poverty reduction is not the same as development, this perspective challenges development agencies to look beyond short-term poverty indicators. Agricultural support that increases dependence on proprietary seed, imported fertilizer and externally designed value chains can reproduce vulnerability even when it is presented as food-security assistance.

Regime transitions in the Sahel

ROAPE’s work on the Sahel likewise resists simple narratives. Military transitions in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger cannot be understood only as democratic breakdowns, even though military rule poses serious risks. They have gained resonance because many citizens connect security failure, French influence, extractive arrangements and donor-backed elite bargains with a deeper loss of sovereignty.

Recent debates on Burkina Faso’s citizenship question also show the danger of anti-imperial rhetoric becoming a language of internal control. The challenge is to distinguish legitimate popular demands for sovereignty from measures that restrict civic rights, mobility and democratic accountability.

Implications for ODA practice

For ODA practitioners, the lesson is practical. Development cooperation must support institutions and productive systems that local actors can govern after external projects end. That means treating seed sovereignty, policy space, public finance, civic freedoms and institutional capacity as core development issues rather than political background noise.

Sources for further reading

• James Akpu, “Food security or seed capture? The colonial potato and Africa’s seed wars,” ROAPE, 18 September 2026: https://roape.net/2026/09/18/food-security-or-seed-capture-the-colonial-potato-and-africas-seed-wars/
• Rick Rowden, “Poverty Reduction Is Not Development,” Review of African Political Economy, 37(126), 2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2010.510631
• Bettina Engels, “Coups and Neo-Colonialism in the Sahel,” Review of African Political Economy, 50(176), 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2215443
• ROAPE, “Before there is anything to punish: Burkina Faso’s new citizenship question,” 2 September 2026: https://roape.net/2026/09/02/before-there-is-anything-to-punish-burkina-fasos-new-citizenship-question/