African Radical Political Economy Working Group

The primary aim of the IIPPE African Radical Political Economy Working Group is to promote intellectual and practical exchange between scholars and activists of African political economy, and those in other IIPPE working groups. Many of the most pressing questions and themes concerning Africa’s political economies – including land reform, the politics of resources, the influence of IFIs and econometric methodologies in development policy and academia, the relationship between state, capital and labour, financialisation and the changing and continuous nature of capitalist transformation – open up channels for comparison with other processes and regions. At the same time, the continent’s modern histories of decolonisation and ill-conceived boundaries, structural adjustment, militarisation and the struggle for sovereignty over currencies and economic policy more generally, have created particular regional dynamics that merit an area focus.

This IIPPE working group is supported by the Review of African Political Economy, whose contributions are based on politically engaged scholarship from a range of disciplines. This journal pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation, oppression, and to struggles against them, whether driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, community and gender. It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation.

In summary, the aims of this working group are:

• To organise activities that promote dialogue between Africa-based scholars/ scholars of Africa, and those who share an interest in radical approaches to political economy, acknowledging the power dynamics in capitalism and often with a critical Marxist perspective.
• In accordance with IIPPE, it seeks to reflect on and address the relationship between critical and radical political economy and activism, from the importance of ‘understanding the world in order to change it’ to more direct forms of engagement with contemporary struggles.

IIPPE Economie Politique Radicale de l’Afrique

L’objectif principal du groupe de travail Economie Politique Radicale de l’Afrique de IIPPE est de promouvoir les échanges, intellectuels et pratiques, entre chercheurs travaillant sur l‘économie politique africaine, activistes et les autres groupes de travail de l’IIPPE. De nombreux thèmes et questions parmi les plus pressants touchant à l’économie politique africaine – notamment la réforme foncière, la politique des ressources, l’influence des institutions financières internationales et des méthodologies économétriques sur les politiques de développement et le milieu universitaire, la relation entre l’Etat, le capital et le travail, la financiarisation et les modalités de transformation du capitalisme entre continuités et discontinuités, ouvrent la voie à des comparaisons avec d’autres processus et d’autres régions. Dans le même temps, l’histoire moderne de la décolonisation du continent et de ses frontières, l’ajustement structurel, la militarisation et les luttes de souveraineté pour la maîtrise de la monnaie et de la politique économique ont mis en branle des dynamiques proprement régionales qui méritent une analyse spécifique.

Le groupe de travail Afrique est appuyé par la Review of African Political Economy, dont les contributions relèvent d’une recherche académique politiquement engagée et interdisciplinaire. Ce journal accorde une attention particulière à l’économie politique des inégalités, de l’exploitation et de l’oppression et des luttes menées contre ces phénomènes, à l’échelle locale comme internationale, sur la base de la classe sociale, de la race, de la communauté ou du genre. Il encourage une analyse critique de la nature du pouvoir et de l’Etat en Afrique dans le contexte de la globalisation capitaliste.

En résumé, les objectifs de ce groupe de travail sont les suivants :

Organiser des activités de promotion du dialogue entre chercheurs basés en Afrique/chercheurs africanistes qui partagent un intérêt pour les approches hétérodoxes de l’économie politique, reconnaissant les dynamiques de pouvoir du capitalisme, y compris dans une perspective critique marxiste,

En conformité avec l’IIPPE, répondre aux enjeux, à la fois intellectuels et politiques, posés par la relation entre économie politique critique et radicale, et activisme, entre reconnaissance de l’importance de « comprendre le monde pour le changer » et formes plus directes d’engagement avec des luttes contemporaines.

Working group coordinators:  Elisa Greco (eligreco@yahoo.com), Ben Radley (borr20@bath.ac.uk), Bettina Engels (bettina@zedat.fu-berlin.de)

Working group members

1. Femi Aborisade
2. Nancy Andrew is a rural development sociologist whose research covers land conflict, primarily in South Africa and Zimbabwe, land reform, land concentration and consequences for the rural poor as part of the capitalist agrarian social and production relations behind these processes. She has worked on landgrabbing in Africa shaped by broader ‘north-south’ dynamics and globalization. A participant in research at the VU (Amsterdam) on impacts of private game farms on black farmdwellers, she has also been associated with Afriques-dans-le-Monde (Sciences Politiques/Bordeaux) for years. Her publications also explore the need for revolutionary alternatives to the existing social system and state, as part of the struggle for land and agricultural production. 
3. Mohammad Amir Anwar is a Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He has a Ph.D in Geography from Trinity College Dublin. His research focus is on the political economy of globalisation in Africa, with a particular interest on the growth of information economy in Africa. His current work investigates the emergence of gig economy and its developmental impacts in Africa. Recent articles are: Does economic upgrading lead to social upgrading in contact centres? evidence from South Africa (African Geographical Review) and The global gig economy: towards a planetary labour market? (First Monday).
4. Samantha Ashman
5. Patrick Bond – distinguished professor at the University of Johannesburg and Director of the Centre for Social Change, where his work presently addresses economic crisis, environment (energy, water and climate change), social mobilization, public policy and geopolitics, with publications about South Africa, Zimbabwe, the African continent, the BRICS bloc and global-scale processes. Best known books are BRICS: An Anti-capitalist Critique (co-edited with Ana Garcia, Pluto Press, 2015), Elite Transition (Pluto Press, 2014); South Africa – The Present as History (with John Saul, James Currey Press, 2014) and Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press, 2012). pbond@mail.ngo.za
6. Ray Bush
7. Pádraig Carmody is an Associate Professor in Geography at Trinity College Dublin, where he did his undergraduate and masters work. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota in the US, where after graduation he also taught at the University of Vermont. At TCD he co-directs the TCD-UCD Masters in Development Practice. His research centres on the political economy of globalisation in Africa. He has published a number of books, including The New Scramble for Africa (2011) and the Rise of the BRICS in Africa (2013) and with Jim Murphy, Africa’s Information Revolution (2015). His current research examines the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions. He sits on the board of Political Geography and African Geographical Review and is editor-in-chief of Geoforum.
   
8. Hassania Chalbi-Drissi
9. Hannah Cross is a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, and chair of the editorial working group of the Review of African Political Economy. Published work includes a book on ‘Migrants, Borders and Global Capitalism: West African labour mobility and EU Borders’ (Routledge 2013/16) and further research on the political economy of migration and labour regimes, the global remittance agenda, and more broadly continuity and change in capitalism in Africa in relation to labour. Her most recent research focuses on migration beyond capitalism. 
10. Bettina Engels is guest professor of peace and conflict studies at the Department for Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and an editor of the Review of African Political Economy
    (RoAPE) and of the Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies. Her research and teaching focusses on the political economy of natural resources, land and labour, and popular struggles and conflicts related to it, in Africa and abroad. She has published on conflicts over extractivism, food prices and cotton, on social movements and labour unionism particularly in Western Africa. 
11. Ruth Castel-Branco is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She coordinates the Future of Wor(ers) research group, which explores the impact of digital technlogies on labour markets and the conditions of work and social reproduction in the global South. Her current areas of research include the political economy of digital labour platforms, emerging forms of worker organization and the socialization of social reproduction, with a focus on social protection.  
12. Yao Graham
13. Hazel Gray is a lecturer in African Studies and Development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. She previously worked at LSE and SOAS and has a PhD from SOAS Economics Department. Her research interests cover the comparative political economy of development, political economy of industrialization, institutions and economic theory. Her regional focus is in East Africa. Previously she worked as an economist at the Ministry of Finance in Tanzania and she continues to work with the Economic and Social Research Foundation in Dar es Salaam.
    
14. Elisa Greco is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE). She has an interest in theoretical issues in critical agrarian studies, with particular reference to the relevance of Marx’s understanding on value and rent in processes of agrarian change. She has published on the land question and class formation in rural Tanzania and on struggles and resistance against land grabbing in African countries. She is now developing a comparative research on finance capital and the restructuring of rice farming areas in East Africa, with an empirical focus on labour and exploitation. She has previously worked as a researcher at the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds in the UK, and as a lecturer in IPE and Development at ESPOL – Université Catholique de Lille. 
15. Rocío Hiraldo is currently on the third year of her PhD at the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia. Her thesis investigates the relationship between the development of conservation-related capital (carbon markets and eco-tourism) in the Sine Saloum delta in Senegal and processes of class formation in this area. She has a particular interest in exploring the global dynamics of capital accumulation, in particular neoliberalisation, and their effects on the transformation of rural economies in African countries. R.Hiraldo@uea.ac.uk
16. Rahmane Idrissa
17. Eka Ikpe
18. Peter Jacobs is an Economist based at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Cape Town. His areas of research interest include: the Economics/Political Economy of agrarian change and structural socio-economic transitions, with special emphasis on land reform and small-scale farming, socioeconomic dynamics of innovation, agro-food value chains and food and nutrition security. Empirically, most of his work concentrates on Southern Africa, using a Global South comparative analytical lens.
19. Peter Lawrence
20. Firoze Manji, a Kenyan, is the Director of the Pan-African Baraza,(www.panafricanbaraza.org), an initiative of (www.thoughtworks.com). He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News (www.pambazuka.org) (2000-2012) and Pambazuka Press / Fahamu Books (http://www.fahamu.org/pambazuka-press) (2008-2012). He is the founder and former executive director (1997-2010) of Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice (www.fahamu.org). He is Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.ips-dc.org/staff-and-board/#associate-fellows); board member of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org); member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy, Goldsmiths College, University of London; member of the editorial board of AwaaZ Magazine (http://www.awaazmagazine.com/); co-editor of Groundings, a publication of the Walter Rodney Foundation; member of the editorial board of the journal South, member of International Editorial Review Board of Global Critical Caribbean Thought; and member of the Advisory Committee of the African Documentary Film Fund (www.adff.org). He is co-editor, with Sokari Ekine, of African Awakenings: The Emerging Revolutions; and co-editor with Bill Fletcher Jr. of Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral
21. Giuliano Martiniello – Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University. He is broadly interested in the political economy and political ecology of agrarian change in Africa. Other themes of interest include theories of agrarian change, land and agrarian questions and reforrms, global capital, land grabbing, food sovereignty/security, social movements with particular reference to South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania. He is now developing further his research spectrum by looking at questions of financialization and commercialization of smallholder agriculture. gmjuliangrimao@gmail.com
22. Chanda Mfula – Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. Chanda is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on a range of fields within media, communications, and journalism, as well as African studies and politics. Additionally, Chanda has professional experience working in media across a range of organisations and subfields which include broadcast media and political communication including managing programmes relating to media development and development media. Chanda is interested in a critical political economy approach to understanding media, communications, politics, development, and Africa affairs, and is deputy chair of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy (RoAPE) journal. His PhD from the University of Sussex traverses the fields of politics, African studies, and communications and media studies.  
23. Susan Newman
24. Jörg Wiegratz is Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies. He is Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, and Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IPPIA), United States International University-Africa, Nairobi. He specializes in neoliberalism, fraud and anti-fraud measures, commercialization and economic pressure and related aspects of moral and political economy, with a focus on Uganda and Kenya. He is member of the editorial working group of Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), co-editor, with Giuliano Martiniello and Elisa Greco, of Uganda: The dynamics of neoliberal transformation (2018, Zed), author of Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio‑Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda (2016, Rowman & Littlefield), and editor of the blog series Economic trickery, fraud and crime in Africa and Capitalism in Africa (roape.net).
25. Kako Nubukpo
26. Paul Okojie
27. Willis Okumu holds a PhD from the University of Cologne (Social Anthropology), having done research on ‘the meanings of violence’ among the Turkana and Samburu of Baragoi, Northern Kenya. He is currently implementing peacebuilding programmes across the Kipsigis and Maasai of Transmara in Southern Kenya while also collecting data on local peacebuilding capacities.
28. Francisco Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. He researches the history and political economy of the CFA franc, a currency union of fourteen countries in West and Central Africa. He is the Director of the Center for Popular Economics, a nonprofit collective of political economists whose programs and publications demystify the economy and put useful economic tools in the hands of people fighting for social and economic justice. He has a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a BA from Harvard University.
29. Nicholas Pons-Vignon is a senior researcher in the School of Economic & Business Sciences (SEBS) at Wits University, South Africa. He holds a PhD from EHESS (Paris). Nicolas’ research focuses on labour markets, economic policy, and the role of the state in economic development. He has co-edited (with Aurelia Segatti) in 2013 a special issue of the Review of African Political Economy (Vol. 40, No. 138) on the political economy of South Africa. He has been the editor of the Global Labour Column since its inception in 2009. Nicolas initiated the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) in 2007, which he directed for 7 years before joining the Scientific committee. Before coming to South Africa in 2004, he worked in Paris at the OECD Development centre, where he researched violent conflicts in developing countries. Nicolas.pons-vignon@wits.ac.za
30. Ben Radley is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath. His research interests relate to the political economy of economic transformation in Africa, with a focus on resource-based industrialisation, green transitions, and labour dynamics. He’s a member of the Editorial Working Group for the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), and an affiliated member of the Centre of Mining Research at the Catholic University of Bukavu, DR Congo. He’s the author of Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus.
31. Chérif Salif Sy
32. Ben Scully is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His work focuses on the political economy of labour, land, social protection, and development with a focus on Southern Africa and the African continent. His current research projects focus on the politics of public works programmes in South Africa and the political economy of child care in South Africa and Ghana.
33. Sara Stevano is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics at SOAS University of London. Her work is on the political economy of food and nutrition, households and labour markets in Africa. She has done research in Mozambique and Ghana. Sara is interested in the use of feminist political economy, drawing on social reproduction theory, to study work, informalisation of employment, and well-being.
34. Lotta Takala-Greenish
35. Jörg Wiegratz – Jör is Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies. He is Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, and Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IPPIA), United States International University-Africa, Nairobi. He specializes in neoliberalism, fraud and anti-fraud measures, commercialization and economic pressure and related aspects of moral and political economy, with a focus on Uganda and Kenya. He is member of the editorial working group of Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), co-editor, with Giuliano Martiniello and Elisa Greco, of Uganda: The dynamics of neoliberal transformation (2018, Zed), author of Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio‑Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda (2016, Rowman & Littlefield), and editor of the blog series Economic trickery, fraud and crime in Africa and Capitalism in Africa (roape.net).

IIPPE Conference presentations