Editorial from ROAPE Volume 36 Number 122
Against One-dimensional Africa

Not only does a vacuous neo-liberal universalism persist but even the slender counter-hegenomies which survive are usually derived from outside Africa. There is a need for recognition that both the potential and the tragedy of African political economy are played out in multiple settings through variegated social and political institutions, both formal and informal. As the intellectual history of ROAPE itself illustrates, the counter to the neo-liberal model for Africa is not another continent-wide prescription. Answers to the pressing questions of social justice, struggle and development must always be provisional and subject to continuous questioning: hence the opposition to notions of a one-dimensional Africa.