![[ROAPE] The candlelit state](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1540575467063-178a50c2df87?w=800&q=85)
Power cuts were a regular feature of childhood in Nairobi. When the electricity failed, my father would gather our family by candlelight and draw. On one such evening, he sketched a woman: a baby strapped to her back, a water pot balanced on her head, a basket of provisions carri
Read more →![[ROAPE] Economic Instrument or Political Tool? Socioeconomic Outcomes of Nigeria's 2022 Currency Redesign and Cashless Policy](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-roape.svg)
Paul Ani Onuh examines how Nigeria's 2022 naira redesign and cash withdrawal limit policy — ostensibly aimed at price stability and financial inclusion — became a weapon in elite political competition ahead of the 2023 election, with the costs of its chaotic implementation falling overwhelmingly on
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Victor Iwuoha and Martin Doevenspeck introduce the concept of 'biometric coloniality' to explain how digital ID systems in Nigeria reproduce colonial relations of domination through a 'digital consensus' among the EU, US, China, World Bank, and major foundations. The biometric state is complicit in
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Rama Salla Dieng argues that Senegal's 2026 anti-gender legislation — raising prison sentences for same-sex relations to ten years — is not a cultural or religious phenomenon but a political displacement strategy by a government in fiscal crisis, operating through patriarchal governance structures w
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Ethan Woolf Moñino argues that bandit groups in Northwest Nigeria have built an alternative economic system that extracts revenue through territorial control and systematic taxation. Banditry is not a cultural or ethnic phenomenon but a rational, profit-seeking enterprise filling the governance vacu
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Sara Caria and Stefano Ghinoi apply social network analysis to AidData to show that Chinese development finance in Africa is differentiated and evolving — not monolithic. The Belt and Road Initiative marks a structural turning point, while natural resource endowments are not the primary driver of Ch
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