Review of African Political Economy最新文献

{"title":"Africa’s unequal balance","authors":"Osama Diab","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2023.2190453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2190453","url":null,"abstract":"SUMMARY Using flows of biophysical resources between countries, new research has defied conventional methods of analysing trade in terms of cash flows. Labelled ‘ecologically unequal exchange’, this research quantifies net resource transfers from global South to global North countries. This article explores the unequal exchange implications for Africa as a primary exporter of physical resources, and hence one of the biggest losers from ecologically unequal exchange. As well as ecologically unequal exchange, the article employs the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis and the Growing Smile model to argue against export-oriented industrialisation models of development, and for the political restructuring of the uneven global value regime.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"50 1","pages":"116 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48642245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Keeping eyes on Sudan – keeping eyes on austerity","authors":"E. Greco","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2023.2240675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2240675","url":null,"abstract":"Cheap borrowing is over and austerity is back. The 2023 International Monetary Fund (IMF) regional report on Africa argues that the continent is at a turning point: a phase of a constant increase in African borrowing on global capital markets, lasting from 2007 to 2022, has come to an end. This saw an increase in the stock of African Eurobonds, which in December 2021 were estimated at US$140 billion (Smith 2021), but rampant global inflation and the increase of borrowing costs put an end to this phase. The issuing of new Eurobonds in Africa declined from US$14 billion in the second quarter of 2021 to US$6 billion in the first quarter of 2022, while the US dollar effective exchange rate reached a 20-year high (IMF 2023). This has once more reinforced the US dollar – under the rising challenge posed by the internationalisation of the Chinese yuan and its recent digitisation (Deng 2023) – as world money, sitting firmly at the top of the global money hierarchy. African countries, like many others in the global South, are once more entrenched low down in the hierarchy of the global monetary system. This dynamic brings to light the ‘remarkable historical continuity of capitalist finance as a key vector of imperialism’ (Alami 2019, 2), while African governments are pushed towards the re-enactment of austerity policies. Since spring 2022, African governments have stopped issuing Eurobonds (IMF 2023) and now, halfway into 2023, eyes are on which African government is going to default next, following on the default of Zambia in 2020 and Ghana in 2022. A new phase of austerity politics highlights the persisting burden of imperialism, while African states grapple with all the features of centuries of historical layering of uneven and combined development (Ashman 2009). Our editorial in issue 174 argued that the global economic slowdown has led to the return of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to the continent, because of the increased rates of indebtedness of most African countries promoted by low interest rates in the first decade of the 2000s. As referenced in that editorial, ROAPE documented the emergence of this dynamic the first time round, in the 1980s, and the role of international financial institutions in enforcing SAPs’ austerity policies, alongside the politics of negotiations, resistance or compliance that these generated at the national level in different countries. As argued by Alami (2018), there is a set of features that can be identified in most emerging or industrialising economies that goes beyond the simple subordination of weaker currencies to stronger currencies on global monetary markets. These features are to be found in most African countries: a persistently strong scrutiny by international investors over national policy processes, high volatility of exchange rates and high interest rates, fragile financial reputations that are easily shaken and rapidly changing, coupled with equally rapid capital flight during moments of fina","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"50 1","pages":"1 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49338887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Helmi Sharawy (1935–2023)","authors":"Reem Abou-El-Fadl","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2023.2240676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2240676","url":null,"abstract":"Helmi Sharawy: not only a comrade in struggle and research, but much more than that. We were among the first Egyptians to realise that our national struggle was an indivisible part of the struggle for the independence of all the peoples and nations of Africa. We were agreed that Egypt and Africa were one unit, had been so since millennia, and should remain so. We supported together, from the first day, the 1955 Bandung Conference and 1957 Afro-Asian Conference from which the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organisation was born. Since then, Sharawy has participated in the continuous struggles of all the African peoples, supported national liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, and stood against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Samir Amin (1931–2018), Marxist theorist and Director of Third World Forum in Dakar, Chair of the World Forum for Alternatives","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"50 1","pages":"90 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45956208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Connecting people and voices for radical change in Africa","authors":"Leo Zeilig, Chinedu Chukwudinma, B. Radley","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2023.2239084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2239084","url":null,"abstract":"In this section of the journal, we aim to give readers of the print journal a picture of what has been published on Roape.net over the last few months, and invite you to connect and follow the articles, blogposts, authors and debates online. Details of all the blogposts referred to here are in the reference list at the end. We warmly invite all our readers to sign up to the Roape.net newsletter and WhatsApp service at the top of the home page of the website.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"50 1","pages":"143 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46095572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of subordinate financialisation in Egypt’s employment crisis","authors":"Osama Diab","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2151358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2151358","url":null,"abstract":"SUMMARY Studies of financialisation have largely ignored its impact in global south contexts. This briefing, therefore, adopts the ‘subordinate financialisation’ framework to study the impact of growing financialisation in Egypt, using primary data on the financial sector, employment and capital formation. To avoid the shortcomings of methodological nationalism, this briefing stresses the global south and historical dimensions of Egypt’s subordinate financialisation. The briefing concludes that traditional policy intervention, including progressive countercyclical measures, is unlikely to counterbalance the adverse effects of this extractive variety of financialisation due to its non-cyclical nature.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"634 - 642"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48593359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How armed militancy transformed power relations in the oil communities of Nigeria’s Niger Delta","authors":"T. M. Ebiede","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2023.2185880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2185880","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the dynamics of conflicts in local communities in the Niger Delta. The article argues that militants associated with armed groups gained significant power in communities due to their dominant roles in the persistent violent conflicts that have plagued the Niger Delta over the last two decades. This is evident in how those associated with armed militant groups influence and control community governance institutions in the region. However, people who are not aligned with militia groups are beginning to challenge the hegemony of those associated with militia groups. This process defines the prevailing dynamics of power relations in the area.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"569 - 583"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48606408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Caught in Europe’s net: ecological destruction and Senegalese migration to Spain","authors":"Noam Chen-Zion","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2186599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2186599","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the beginning of the 21st century, Europe has seen a substantial increase in undocumented economic migration from West Africa. Dominant public discourse on this migration wave fails to identify its underlying drivers. This article analyses contemporary migration within the structure of modern imperialism, demonstrating how European extraction of wealth and resources from West Africa fosters migration. Imperial expropriation is made concrete through a case study of Senegalese fishers now living in Badalona, Spain. Drawing on their life histories and situating their trajectories within the broader context of Senegalese economic history, this article argues that they were pushed to migrate largely due to industrial fishing fleets draining West African marine life. In Spain, a regime of illegality has coerced these Senegalese fishers into highly exploitative sectors, to the tremendous benefit of Spanish capital. Their ceaseless struggle to work under such violent conditions can only be explained by the need to sustain their impoverished families in Senegal.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"584 - 600"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41529009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tanzania’s solidarity tax","authors":"Francis Nyonzo","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2138308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2138308","url":null,"abstract":"SUMMARY Financial services are important for development. Most people in developing countries lack access to financial services. The availability of financial services on mobile phones has made these services accessible to people who previously lacked access. Economists have recommended that infrastructure and tax systems be improved in order to enable more people to benefit from mobile financial services. However, in 2021 the Tanzanian government introduced levies on mobile transactions and airtime, which increased the costs of transactions, contrary to the advice of economists. This briefing discusses the taxes on mobile money transactions and their economic legitimacy, considering the fact that the country was not in an emergency and that there are revenue losses.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"643 - 651"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43153916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The return of recession, debt and structural adjustment","authors":"P. Lawrence","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2204035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2204035","url":null,"abstract":"As our editorial in Issue 173 argued, we are ‘witnessing the intensification of neoliberalism and an accompanying resurgence of its associated power and institutions, maybe above all the IMF in Africa and elsewhere’. A world recession induced by pandemic and war, a consequent boom in energy prices and a cost-of-living crisis with rising inflation, especially of food prices, is threatening to reverse the progress that many African economies made during the ‘commodity super-cycle’ of the 2000s and the first part of the 2010s. Indeed, there are strong echoes of the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, itself induced by a twelvefold increase in the price of oil and in Africa, by famine and war. In both cases, these appearances of crisis disguise the fundamental contradiction of capitalism – the relentless pressure to increase profits facing the limits of realisation as consumption is squeezed and the state is restricted in its powers of intervention, even in limiting the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on its already impoverished population. While much attention has been focused on the oligarchs of Russia and Ukraine, these plutocrats, as they should be called, exist all over the world. Their increasing influence is evident everywhere. They acquire their wealth by hoarding the economic rent they receive from highly valued products and paying as low wages as they can get away with to largely nonunionised labour. They then secure that wealth and economic power from any government intervention, first by capturing political parties – and not only of the right, but also the self-styled left – and then playing a crucial role in funding their election campaigns. Then, after those parties win elections, the government is captured and liberal democracies or countries moving towards such democracy morph into shades of oligarchy or even autocracy, as we observe most obviously in countries such as India, Hungary and Turkey, and in Africa, Uganda. Once again, the chief beneficiary of this war-induced recession is US imperialism and its dominant finance–security complex (if not oligarchy) based on oil, gas and arms. The US been able to benefit not only as an oil producer from the increase in the oil price but also from the increased demand for its liquid petroleum gas (LPG), as Europe reduces its demand for Russian gas following that country’s further invasion of Ukraine. The potential axis of Brussels–Moscow–Beijing, which would have been a serious threat to US global interests, has been averted. The US has been able to reassert its hegemony over Europe through its mobilisation of economic and military support for Ukraine and has also underlined its hegemony in the Far East with its clear assertion of its support for Taiwan’s independence, reaffirming its strategy of, and belief in, a unipolar world. For the countries of Africa, the last decade has seen a large increase in sovereign debt in the wake of the extremely low interest rates that followed th","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"523 - 530"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42275354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Migration, Europe, and the question of political and economic sovereignty in Africa","authors":"H. Cross","doi":"10.1080/03056244.2022.2176095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2022.2176095","url":null,"abstract":"SUMMARY This debate piece argues for the importance of labour internationalism and anti-imperialism in the anti-racist defence of migrants. A focus on the Sahel region shows some of the ways that core European states militarily, economically and politically undermine countries’ potential for self-determination. Border regimes, their modes of accumulation and selective labour policies expand militarism, social division and inequality between and within the regions. Challenges to these processes of global apartheid require attention to the national question and rejection of European imperialism, as indicated in recent pan-African calls for independence and popular sovereignty. This materialist analysis of migration in capitalism presents a basis for demanding equality of movement and the freedom and equality of societies facing capitalism-induced displacement.","PeriodicalId":47526,"journal":{"name":"Review of African Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"601 - 610"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48417621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}