Review of African Political Economy

Since 1974 the Review of African Political Economy has provided radical analysis of trends, issues and social processes in Africa, adopting a broadly materialist interpretation of change.

Established by a group of scholars and activists in the UK and Africa, the journal is committed to understanding projects of radical transformation. From the state-led attempts at political transformation in Tanzania to the later wave of independence in Mozambique and Angola. ROAPE sought to analyse the contradictions, potentials and emerging class dynamic in these countries. Later, in the 1980s, the journal focused on understanding the development of protest movements and the nature of the class struggle in the context of structural adjustment that was tearing up the fragile edifice of national states. As the continent has evolved in the 1990s and 2000s, we have continued to focus on patterns and processes of accumulation – local and national – while examining class, gender and race as forms of exploitation, domination and subordination.

ROAPE is self-published and hosted and run by Science Open. Science Open is an international open access platform publishing books, research papers and journals. Full access to the journals contents and information about how to submit articles and research papers can be found on this site.

Roape.net, like the journal, pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression and to organised struggles against them, whether these inequities are driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, ethnicity and gender. It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation. ROAPE is different from other journals because of its significance in countering neo-liberal dogma in the analysis of different country cases and with its focus on social movements and transformations. ROAPE believes that another world is possible.

Together with the print journal, roape.net seeks to develop a critique of the existing balance of class and social forces in African political economy as a vital part of the project of radical political, environmental and economic transformation. ROAPE’s online platform keeps the struggles for racial, gender and economic equality at the centre of our focus. We do not seek to become a substitute for African voices, but a sounding board and platform for them.

ROAPE offers an agenda of radical political economy that is not only critique but also explores the possibilities of an alternative in the continental projects and movements that have attempted (or are attempting) to build one. We believe that we remain at the cutting edge of debates on African political economy through our continued focus on the agrarian question, rural immiseration dramatised by the food sovereignty debates, the shifting dynamics of popular protest, the transformation of imperialism on the continent, the role of national and international elites and a critical analysis of failed projects for radical change on the continent.

Contribute

Instructions for Website Submissions

If you would like to submit a piece to the roape.net website, please send a short pitch to website.editor@roape.net. We publish a range of contributions, including blog pieces (800 to 1800 words), debate pieces (1000 to 1500 words, see here for the debates we are currently hosting), book reviews or excerpts (1200 to 2000 words), and long reads (up to 4500 words). Please write in an engaging and lively manner (i.e. non-academic language), make use of hyperlinks, and avoid referencing wherever possible.

Instructions for Journal Submissions

Please note that we reserve the right to return material which is not sent to us in the preferred ROAPE style or which has not been carefully edited by the author.

1. Check our guidelines

First, please check that your proposed submission falls within ROAPE’s remit:

“ROAPE has, since 1974, provided radical analysis of trends and issues in Africa. It has paid particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression, whether driven by global forces or local ones (such as class, race, community and gender), and to materialist interpretations of change in Africa. It has sustained a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa.”

Aside from this substantive remit, we are looking for submissions which present new empirical material, rethink existing literature in a stimulating fashion, or coherently argue a fresh understanding of existing issues. We seek papers which are clearly organised, concisely expressed and free from unnecessary jargon, sexist or other discriminatory language. We may occasionally consider material in languages other than English.

2. Is it an original contribution?

Submissions should be original contributions not previously published (in part or in whole) and not under consideration for any other publication, unless a special case has been made.

3. ROAPE publishes Articles, Debates and Briefings

Briefings are generally short, topical and informative pieces, including documents, with a ‘stop press’ policy for urgent items. Debates require an author to take a position on a controversial topic, either engaging with a previous piece or inviting response. The maximum length for Briefings and Debates is 4,000 words.

Articles are generally longer and aim both to inform the reader and to engage in debate around theory and/or political economy analysis. Our recommended length for an article is not longer than 8,000 words, including footnotes and bibliography. We cannot accept article manuscripts longer than 8,000 words, unless exceptional reasons can be cited.

We also publish reviews of academic and political books, fiction and film. The recommended length is 800 words or up to 2,000 for a review article.

4. Submission procedure

Submissions are made online at Science Open’s Review of African Political Economy site. To submit a manuscript:

• Register on ScienceOpen and link your ORCID account (required!) to your profile. Do not untick email notifications as those will keep you updated throughout the submission process;
• Submit your manuscript as a PDF document via → Submit a manuscript button on the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) landing page;
• Complete the online submission via the user interface/submission form;
• After submission your manuscript will undergo assessment by a journal editor to check for suitability, completeness, and basic scholarly integrity in line with the journal’s publishing policies;
• If approved for peer review, the PDF file will be uploaded as manuscript under submission to the journal and pending for reviewers;
• Once your paper is reviewed, you will be notified via email;
• If accepted, most articles are entered into the Science Open Central Article Tracking System, and a link to the copy-edited proofs, along with any queries for the author(s), are sent to the corresponding author. Authors are requested to implement corrections and reply to all queries and return these within 48 hours.

For further guidance on how to submit a manuscript, and more information on the review process, see here.

5. Style guidelines

While we are willing to help out with editing the work of authors whose first language is not English, we expect other manuscripts to come to us in a finally edited form. 

This entails following the guidelines below:

1. Any track changes or headers and footers should be removed. Justify text to the left.
2. Text should be in Microsoft Word for Windows. PDFs on their own are not accepted.
3. All submissions must include a separate file uploaded with the author’s name, current affiliation and contact information (email and postal address, phone numbers) and some brief biographical details. The author’s name should not appear on any other page.
4. Before uploading your Word document onto the submissions website, please anonymise it via the menus by selecting File > Check for Issues > Inspect document > Inspect > Document Properties and Personal Information [Remove All] and Inspect > Headers, Footers, and Watermarks [Remove All].
5. A list of up to six keywords should be provided. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of making your article more visible to anyone who might be looking for it. Guidance is available on the ScholarOne Manuscripts site.
6. Notes should be short and kept to a maximum of 10, using your word processor’s endnote function.
7. Single quotation marks should be used for quotations within text (with double quotes within these where necessary: e.g. ‘The ANC was particularly keen to promote black ownership and control of the “commanding heights” of the economy’). Where a longer passage is quoted, indent from margin (no quotation marks required). Where a quotation is given, please provide the page number along with the referenced work.
8. Paragraphs should be separated by one line space but not indented.
9. Please use –ise/-isation spelllings, rather than -ize/-ization – e.g. ‘civilise’ and ‘civilisation’ rather than ‘civilize’ and ‘civilization’.
10. is used to denote an immediately prior citation; otherwise the reference should be repeated, e.g. (Annan 2004, 6).
11. Graphs, tables, figures, barcharts, maps etc should be numbered and submitted in a separate file, not embedded in the text. A caption and source should be provided for each. Please provide editable files so that captions/axis labels can be amended if necessary. Line drawings and photographs are also welcome – please check with us in relation to format. Illustrations should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi in order to be of sufficient quality to print.
12. Please give all abbreviations in full on first use.
13. Dates should appear as follows: 9 December 2015; 1990s (no apostrophe); twentieth century.
14. Numbers from one to nine in words; percentages and decimals written in figures; fractions spelt out as one-half, three-quarters etc.

In text this means bracketing the author’s surname and date of publication (with page reference where an actual quotation is given): Examples: (Mamdani 2004, 34) and (Rodney 1975; Cliffe 1977; Saul 1974).

At the end of the article only material cited in the text should be listed:

Examples:

Guyer, J. 1987. “Comparative Epilogue.” In Feeding African Cities: Studies in Regional Social History, edited by J. Guyer, 148—154. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Mamdani, M. 2004. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, Cold War and the Roots of Terrorism, Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

Ponte, S. 2004. “The Politics of Ownership: Tanzanian Coffee Policy in the Age of Liberal Reformism.” African Affairs 103 (413): 23—49.

Zeilig, L. 2021. Frantz Fanon: The Militant Philosopher of Third World Liberation. London: I. B. Tauris.

Newspaper titles should be italicised (e.g. The Daily Graphic).

Websites must be cited with a title and/or author. The date of access is only required if the online document is undated, and is then used as year of publication.

Examples:

Littlejohn, G. 2015. “The BRICS New Development Bank and Africa.” Accessed December 9, 2015. https://roape.net/2015/11/16/the-brics-new-development-bank-and-africa/

Hunkins, J. 2015. “Rehad Desai’s ‘Miners Shot Down’ Wins an International Emmy for Best Documentary.” November 24. http://10and5.com/2015/11/24/rehad-desais-miners-shot-down-wins-an-international-emmy-for-best-documentary/

Open Access Publishing Agreement

By submitting my manuscript to the Review of African Political Economy published by ScienceOpen (hereafter the ‘Publisher’), I herewith grant permission to the Publisher to publish my article upon editorial acceptance under the following publishing agreement.

I hereby confirm that this is my original work and that

• I own sole copyright in this work
• And/or I have obtained permission from all other Authors to execute this Agreement on their behalf if necessary

And that the work

• Has never been published before.

I understand that in granting this consent I am granting to the Publisher the Rights to publish under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license the Contribution in the English language in digital form; moral rights will be retained by the original Author/s and copyright will be held by the Author.

I agree to this Publishing Agreement, consent to execution and delivery of the Publishing Agreement electronically and agree that confirming my consent electronically during the manuscript submission process with an electronic signature shall be given the same legal force as a handwritten signature.

Terms of Use

1. The Contribution will be made Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY License) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the Contribution is properly cited.
2. The Journal (and Publisher) reserves the right to require changes to the Contribution, including changes to the length of the Contribution, as a condition of its acceptance. The Journal (and Publisher) reserves the right, notwithstanding acceptance, not to publish the Contribution if for any reason such publication would in the reasonable judgment of the Journal (and Publisher), result in legal liability or violation of journal ethical practices. If the Journal (or Publisher) decides not to publish the Contribution, the Author is free to submit the Contribution to any other journal from any other publisher.
3. As above, the final Contribution will be made Open Access under the terms of the CC-BY license. Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the final Contribution in whole or in part in any medium by the Author as permitted by this Agreement requires a citation to the Journal suitable in form and content as follows: (Title of Contribution, Author, Journal Title and Volume/lssue, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), Date). Links to the final published Contribution should be provided following the guidance below on best practice.

Retained Rights

The Author retains all proprietary rights in addition to copyright, such as patent rights in any process, procedure or article of manufacture described in the Contribution.

Author's Representations

The Author(s) certify that they have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have their name listed as a contributor. The Author(s) believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, except as described in the covering letter. The Author(s) certify that all the data collected during the study is presented in this manuscript and no data from the study has been or will be published separately. If requested by the editors, the Author(s) will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in the cover letter. Sources of outside support of the project are named in the cover letter.

Use of Information

The Author(s) acknowledges that, during the term of this Agreement and thereafter (for as long as necessary), the Publisher and the Journal may process the Author’s personal data, including storing or transferring data outside of the country of the Contributor’s residence, in order to communicate with the Author(s) and that the Publisher has a legitimate interest in processing the Author(s)’ personal data. By entering into this Agreement, the Author(s) agree to the processing of personal data (and, where applicable, confirms that the Author has obtained the permission from all other authors to process their personal data). The Publisher and the Journal shall comply with all applicable laws, statutes and regulations relating to data protection and privacy and shall process such personal data.

1. How to submit your manuscript

• Register on ScienceOpen and link your ORCID account (required!) to your profile. Do not untick email notifications as those will keep you updated throughout the submission process. You can of course change any of those settings via your →My ScienceOpen dropdown menu, →Dashboard, →Administration.
• Submit your manuscript as a PDF document via →Submit a manuscript button on the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) landing page:

Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) – ScienceOpen

• Complete the online submission via the user interface/submission form.
• After submission your manuscript will undergo assessment by a journal editor to check for suitability, completeness, and basic scholarly integrity in line with the journal’s publishing policies.
• If approved for peer review, the PDF file will be uploaded as manuscript under submission to the journal and pending for reviewers.
• Once your paper is reviewed, you will be notified via email.

2. Submitting your revision

• When you are notified that your paper is reviewed and requires revisions, please follow below steps:
• Login to →My ScienceOpen
• Navigate to your manuscript page and you will then see a àNew Revision button under the header information section of the record page. Click this to upload a revised file via the submission interface
• Check all details are correct and upload the new revised PDF file (remove all/any tracked changes – this will be the file presented online during the review process). Please make sure you clarify how you revised your paper and respond fully to any/all reviewer and editor comments in the “Revision notes” section of the form (see below for further guidance).

3. Responding to reviewer reports and comments

• Please clarify how you have revised your paper when submitting your revision by filling out the “Revision notes” section in the submission form.
• Comments can be answered by clicking on the →Reply button at the end of the manuscript record page.

4. Publishing your peer reviewed paper

• When your manuscript is finally approved for publishing, you will be notified via email. Please follow the below steps:
• Go to the manuscript record page
• Upload your final documents in accordance with the instructions

• After successful proofreading process, your paper will be published as official article in the ROAPE journal.

Editorial Group

The Review has a largely UK-based editorial working group supported by an international advisory group and by contributing editors from Africa, Europe and the Americas.

The International Advisory Board consists of Sarah Bracking, Bonnie Campbell, Fantu Cheru, Jean Copans, Caroline Ifeka, Shubi Ishemo, Gabrielle Lynch, John Markakis, Giles Mohan, Adebayo Olukoshi, Sara Pantuliano, John Saul, Issa Shivji, Morris Szeftel, and Gavin Williams.

We remember the following comrades who were closely involved with the journal: Chris Allen, Samir Amin, A M Babu, Carolyn Baylies, Björn Beckman, Lionel Cliffe, Basil Davidson, Ruth First, Bill Freund, John Loxley, Jitendra Mohan, Sam Moyo, Raufu Mustapha and Stephen Riley.

Privacy Policy

This policy documents our processes in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as of 22 May 2018.

The data controller is ROAPE PUBLICATIONS LTD. This is registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Reg No. 25381), of P.O. Box 678, Sheffield S1 1BF (hereinafter called ‘the Co-operative’/ we/ our).

We are owners of the journal – the Review of African Political Economy, and the websites roape.net and roape.org.

This privacy notice applies to: visitors to our sites who do not register as well as those who do; authors, referees and contributors to the journal or to roape.net; applicants for and recipients of grant funding and other awards; attendees at conferences, workshops and other events; and all individual contractors and service providers who provide services to the Co-operative (you).

We are a data controller. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you, and for explaining this clearly to you. Personal information means any information relating to an individual from which that person can be identified.

This policy will be reviewed periodically. Any changes will be posted on this webpage and will become effective at that time. We encourage you to review this page periodically for significant changes.

Data types collected

Sharing your data

Your information will not be shared with third parties outside the Editorial Working Group, used for marketing purposes, or used in any other way, except as set out in this notice or where required by law.

We will share your information with third parties where necessary for the publication of the Journal and the management of the Co-operative with our publisher (Taylor and Francis Group), with professional advisors, with HMRC or other government law enforcement agencies, and if we have a legal obligation to do so.

Cookies

This website uses cookies for the purpose of gathering anonymised statistics about page views, using Google Analytics. This does not include any personally identifiable data. You can opt out of Google Analytics at this link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

You can opt out of cookies through your internet browser.

Data Security

We have in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed without authorisation, altered or disclosed. We have procedures to deal with any suspected security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach as legally required.

All author and referee accounts on Clarivate Analytics – ScholarOne manuscripts are password protected and are only edited by you, the Production Editor and Taylor and Francis Group.

All of the Editorial Working Group are based in the European Economic Area (EEA). We do not share personal details with the Contributing Editors and International Advisory Board, some of whom are based outside the EEA. If you are based outside the EEA we may transfer personal information to the correspondence address you provide us. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that such transfers are secure. By instructing us from outside the EEA you acknowledge and agree that such transfers are necessary for us to provide services and manage our relationship with you.

Data retention

We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. Where a minimum retention period is required by law, such as retaining records for HMRC purposes, we will comply with that period plus up to 12 months to allow time for us to anonymise or delete information in accordance with our internal data management processes.

We will regularly review the data we hold and will delete or anonymise anything we no longer need.

Requests about your data

To request access to all the data ROAPE holds about you (a subject access request) or request an export in a standard format (data portability) email website.editor@roape.net.

To request deletion of some or all the data ROAPE holds about you (right to removal) or to rectify an error in it or request restrictions on our processing of it email website.editor@roape.net.

You have a right to object to ROAPE’s processing of your personal data. To exercise this right email website.editor@roape.net.

Complaints

If you have a complaint, please direct this to website.editor@roape.net in the first instance. You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you are unhappy with our use of your personal information: you can do this at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or write to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Wilmslow SK9 5AF, United Kingdom.

ROAPE Editorial Collective

Get in touch

ROAPE Online is keen to hear from you, with suggestions for submissions, reports, campaigns and projects that we should cover on the website.

Email us

website.editor@roape.net

Legal

You can contact ROAPE for legal/hosting matters as (these are the same details you will find on our internet domain-name registration): c/o Colin Stoneman, Old School, Swine, Hull, East Yorkshire HU11 4JE or via roape@stoneman.karoo.co.uk This website is based in South Africa, and is for information only. You cannot purchase anything from this site. Specifically it is not a ecommerce website under the terms of Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002.