About the Journal

The Journal of African Political Economy and Development (JAPED) is a peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal dedicated to advancing rigorous interdisciplinary research on Africa's political, economic, and social transformations. JAPED is published by Porthologos Press under the auspices of the African Review of Economics and Finance Consult (AREF Consult) and operates as a fully open-access publication with no article processing charges.

JAPED is indexed by EBSCO and archived by Portico. The journal is committed to meeting the quality standards of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), and SciELO, and is registered with African Journals Online (AJOL).

JAPED publishes original research that engages Africa's contemporary political economy, development trajectories, and social transformations. The journal defines "contemporary Africa" as the continent from the early twentieth century onward — encompassing the colonial, independence, and post-independence periods — while welcoming research that situates contemporary conditions within longer historical and civilisational contexts.

The journal takes an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, welcoming contributions from political science, economics, history, sociology, development studies, anthropology, law, philosophy, environmental studies, and related fields insofar as they engage substantively with African realities. JAPED is particularly committed to research that:

■  Centres African experiences, data, and analytical frameworks rather than applying externally derived models without adequate contextualisation 

■  Raises critical, historically grounded questions about governance, development, and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism 

■  Advances alternative and indigenous theoretical frameworks for understanding African political economy 

■  Contributes to policy discourse and is relevant to practitioners, policymakers, and civil society actors, as well as to academic audiences 

■  Examines the African diaspora and its connections to political economy, development, and cultural transformation on the continent 

JAPED's thematic scope includes but is not limited to:

Political & Governance Themes	Economic & Development Themes
Electoral politics and democracy	Development finance and resource governance
State formation and governance institutions	Agrarian and peasant economies
Political culture and social movements	Financial markets and monetary systems
Conflict, peace, and security	Trade, industrialisation, and structural transformation
Environmental and climate governance	Energy policy and energy transitions
Local, corporate, and environmental governance	Indigenous economic systems and Metanomics
African diaspora politics	Social inequality and inclusive growth
Post-colonial theory and decolonisation	African Union and regional integration

JAPED welcomes full-length articles, review articles, research notes, policy commentaries, and letters. All submission types are subject to peer review.

Full title	Journal of African Political Economy and Development
Abbreviated title	J. Afr. Polit. Econ. Dev.
Print ISSN	2518-847X
Online ISSN	3057-3963
Publisher	Porthologos Press / AREF Consult
Publication frequency	Biannual (June and December)
Open access	Yes — fully open access, zero article processing charges
Peer review	Double-blind
Languages	English (primary); French abstracts accepted for Francophone African research
Licence	CC BY-SA 4.0
Started	2017
Indexed in	EBSCO; AJOL; Portico (archiving)
Website	https://afec-japed.org
DOI prefix	Assigned via CrossRef

JAPED is a fully open-access journal. All published content is immediately and permanently freely available to any reader, anywhere in the world, with no subscription, registration, or payment required. There are no article processing charges (APCs), submission fees, or page charges of any kind. JAPED is a public good, committed to the democratisation of knowledge.

All articles published in JAPED are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Under this licence, authors retain copyright to their work. Users may freely copy, distribute, adapt, remix, and build upon published content for any purpose, including commercial use, provided that: (a) appropriate credit is given to the original authors and source; (b) a link to the licence is provided; and (c) any derivative works are distributed under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms. By submitting to JAPED, authors grant the journal the right to publish and distribute their work under these terms.

No Fees — Ever JAPED charges no submission fees, no review fees, no article processing charges (APCs), and no page fees. Publication in JAPED is free for all authors. Open access is funded by the institutional support of AREF Consult and Porthologos Press.