News & Events

The Africa Knows! conference will be the closing activity of the special 'Africa 2020' year. It wll take place from 2-4 December 2020 at the The Hague University of Applied Sciences/De Haagse Hogeschool. The main issues that will be addressed are: is Africa preparing itself for leapfrogging to innovations? What will the nascent multi-polar world of the 21st century mean for Africa’s role in knowledge and innovation? How do we finally decolonize the minds and change attitudes towards real co-creation? Deadline: 31 March.

Klaas van Walraven learnt of the existence of a burial ground for Dutchmen in Brazzaville, dating from the late 1880s. Congo-Brazzaville was never a Dutch possession. So why does it boast a Dutch cemetery? And who are the young men lying there? Read his latest contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog!

On the occasion of the 'Africa 2020' year, the African Studies Centre Leiden has compiled a thematic map showing a number of developments in African countries during the last sixty years, relating to: year of independence, population growth, social indicators e.g. literacy rates, agglomerations, agriculture, and state stability-fragility. See the map and read the full text.

The ASCL is deeply saddened to report that one of its senior researchers, Dr Marcel Rutten, passed away in his home in Nijmegen on the morning of 12 January 2020. Marcel, born on 1 December 1957, was a highly respected and well-liked colleague who will be particularly remembered for his solid research on land, access to land and land rights in Kenya. Throughout his career Marcel’s work focused on pastoralists and everything associated with pastoralism in Kenya: land, water, people, cattle and the state. His love of Kenya, integrity and insistence on working on an equal basis with his Kenyan partners, will be remembered both in Kenya as well as in the Netherlands.

One year ago Harry Wels wrote a New Year’s blog in which he wondered if 2019 could become the year of ‘the decentring of the human in African Studies’. If the failed UN climate conference in Madrid, last December, can be seen as some sort of answer to this question, one could conclude that humans still feel to be standing very firm on their pedestal of superiority. However, two recent developments give Wels reason for optimism, even though not necessarily hope.