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.