The Red Soil

For people and planet: eco-socialist analysis from Africa and the Global South.

An Astro-powered publication exploring capitalism, colonialism, and climate collapse through a decolonial, eco-socialist lens.

Features

• Eco-socialist analysis of capitalism, colonialism, and climate systems
• Decolonial perspective rooted in Africa and the Global South
• Markdown and MDX content support
• Reading time estimates and table of contents support
• Responsive layout with accessibility-focused markup
• SEO metadata support and feed generation (RSS, Atom, JSON Feed)
• Built-in search with JSON index
• Category pages for content organization

Tech Stack

• Framework: Astro with MDX integration
• Language: TypeScript
• Styling: Scoped CSS with CSS variables
• Fonts: self-hosted via @fontsource (Oswald, Work Sans, JetBrains Mono)
• Icons: Remixicon
• Build tools: Fontaine for font metric optimization

Getting Started

Prerequisites: Node.js 22.21.1 or higher, Git.

git clone https://github.com/theredsoil/laterite.git
cd laterite
npm install
npx lefthook install  # set up git hooks
npm run dev

Local dev server: http://localhost:4321

Configuration

Site configuration lives in src/config.ts.

Writing Content

Create dispatches as Markdown or MDX files in src/content/dispatches/.

---
title: "Your Article Title"
datePublished: "YYYY-MM-DD"
description: "Brief SEO description"
author: "Your Name"
excerpt: "Short summary for listings"
categories: ["Category1", "Category2"]
tags: ["tag1", "tag2"]
image: "/images/your-open-graph-image.webp"
---

For editorial and submission standards, read EDITORIAL_GUIDELINES.md.

Commands

All commands are run from the project root.

Command	Action
npm install	Install dependencies
npm run dev	Start local dev server at localhost:4321
npm run build	Build production site to ./dist/
npm run preview	Preview local production build
npm run check	Check TypeScript types
npm run format	Format code with Prettier
npm run test	Run tests with Vitest

Deployment

Build the site and deploy the dist/ folder to any static hosting service.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome for both code and content.

• Add posts in src/content/dispatches/ with the required frontmatter
• Run npm run check and npm run test before opening a pull request
• Follow commit prefixes: Add:, Fix:, Update:, Remove:, Docs:
• Follow the editorial standards in EDITORIAL_GUIDELINES.md

License

This project is dual licensed.

• Code: MIT License
• Content: CC0 1.0 Universal

See LICENCE for full details and SPDX identifiers.

Acknowledgments

• Built with Astro
• Icons by Remixicon
• Fonts by Fontsource
• Theme base: Volks-Typo