Leo’s books have been critically acclaimed, including reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Independent. He writes in a range of newspapers, reviews, edited collections, and online platforms.

Leo is also a novelist, and his critically acclaimed novel Eddie the Kid was published by Zero Books. It was praised in The Guardian: ‘This passionate, sad and well-told book offers a compelling portrait of a flawed young radical.’ Eddie the Kid won the 2014 Creative Work prize at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In 2017 Leo’s second novel, An Ounce of Practice, was published by Hoperoad. Praised in The Conversation as ‘a brilliant work of literary imagination.’ Leo published his third novel The World Turned Upside Down with the Nigerian publisher Books Farm House & Publishers in 2021.  His short stories have also appeared in different collections (for example see here and here).

Leo is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) —the radical African-studies journal founded by activists and scholars in 1974— and a Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.