POLIS scholars help launch new Africa online debate platform
2016 promises to be a lively year on the new ROAPE website.
The academic journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) last month launched its new website that offers an exciting online platform for analyses, debates and information regarding major political economic dynamics in Africa. The site also offers ROAPE’s cutting-edge journal content and provides information about ROAPE-sponsored conferences, symposiums, activist forums and projects, as well as the competitions the journal hold. POLIS scholars Dr Alex Beresford, Professor Ray Bush and Dr Jörg Wiegratz, as members of the ROAPE editorial working group, are part of the collective that worked on the launch of the website.
The new site hosts many of ROAPE’ book reviews, briefings and debates through a free member’s sign-in on the relevant page, but it also has a blog and will have a link back to ROAPE’s older website, which will continue, for now, to be the repository for the archive and the less fast-moving journal content. The new site furthermore showcases the bursary, ROAPE support for conferences and other outreach information, and offers short teasers to the articles which will be published in the print journal for a broader audience and longer pieces exclusively online.
The website includes a new initiative, coordinated by Dr Wiegratz, that offers opportunities to post on Economic Trickery, Fraud and Crime in Africa. It is dedicated to the reporting about and analysis of two themes: first, economic fraud, trickery and crime, and, second, measures undertaken by state and non-state actors to address, counter and contain fraud and crime in the economy. The purpose of the project is to have a platform for the regular exchange of up-to-date information, opinions and analysis about these important phenomena, covering all African countries. The project coordinator welcomes articles and contributions about fraud and the fight against fraud from for instance NGOs, government officials, academics, transporters, detectives, private security professionals, journalists or students. Dr Wiegratz explains the parameters to this project here. POLIS third year Undergraduate student Nataliya Mykhalchenko has already published two pieces under the project space about the findings of her research during summer 2015, supported by the ESSL Summer Research Internships Scheme, on anti-fraud measures in Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa and Rwanda. Other articles on aspects of fraud have been published in Janury 2016 too, by Professor Patrick Bond (Witwatersrand) and Dr Malin Nystrand (Gothenburg) on (il)licit financial flows in South Africa, and on fraud in Uganda respectively.
2016 promises to be a lively year on the new ROAPE website.
