ROAPE Watch · 2026-08-27
This IOCSS briefing reviews recent articles from the Review of African Political Economy that are relevant to ODA, donor dependency, regime change, political legitimacy, and human rights in Africa. The post does not reproduce the original articles; it provides analytical summaries and links to the ROAPE originals.
The extraversion of African academic journals
Date: 2026-08-07 · Category: ODA / Development Cooperation
The article examines how donor funding, publishing NGOs, and international research infrastructures have shaped African academic publishing since the colonial period and the post-1980s higher education crisis. Its central concern is that aid-backed knowledge systems can reproduce dependency unless African institutions build durable, autonomous research and publication capacity.
Of heroes and hero worship? The Big Conservation Lie
Date: 2026-07-16 · Category: Conservation / Aid Critique
This review highlights the colonial continuities embedded in externally financed conservation models. It questions hero-centred narratives that marginalize local communities and shows how environmental aid can become a vehicle for unequal authority over land, wildlife, and knowledge.
Burkina Faso and the return of political economy
Date: 2026-08-05 · Category: Regime Change / Sahel Politics
The piece situates Ibrahim Traoré’s Burkina Faso within the broader Sahelian rejection of French influence and neoliberal electoral politics. It argues that questions of production, distribution, sovereignty, and state-led development have returned to the centre of political debate, while the new order still faces significant institutional and social constraints.
The homophobia of Pan-African regimes
Date: 2026-07-31 · Category: Human Rights / Political Legitimacy
The article examines how some anti-Western or Pan-Africanist regimes mobilize homophobic discourse to consolidate legitimacy after political transition. It underlines the contradiction between emancipatory rhetoric and exclusionary politics in contemporary West African state-building.
Source: Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE). All original articles are linked above.