News & Events

The European Conference on African Studies ECAS 2015 took place 8-10 July at the Sorbonne in Paris. The principal theme of ECAS 6 was Collective Mobilisations in Africa: Contestation, Resistance, Revolt. Many ASC researchers organized a panel, participated in round table discussions or presented a new book. Take a look at the photo impression!

The ASC and Karthala (Paris) have published a new book by Mayke Kaag a.o.: État, sociétés et Islam au Sénégal: un air de nouveau temps? (State, societies and Islam in Senegal: new times?). The book was born out of collaboration between diplomats and scholars. In the post-9/11 era, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs felt that they needed more knowledge about Islam and Muslims in the countries with which they were working. ASC researcher Mayke Kaag coordinated the programme on Islam in Senegal. The book was launched during ECAS on Friday 10 July.

Watch the short interview with Anna Arnone (SOAS, University of London), who was our speaker during the ASC seminar 'Africa-Europe Migration: Lampedusa caught between shipwreck and tourism' on 2 July. She talks about the 'impossible encounters' between the island's inhabitants, the (mostly Eritrean) migrants and the tourists. 

The African Studies Centre in Leiden and the Beijing Foreign Studies University signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Monday 29 June in Leiden. In the MoU the ASC and BFSU declare that they want to cooperate in order to enhance the quality and relevance of African Studies in Leiden and Beijing, and to support African Studies in Africa and elsewhere. Beijing Foreign Studies University (established in 1941) is regarded as the cradle of diplomats in China and is renowned for its cultural and foreign languages studies.

A document has been discovered in a Russian archive proving that Nelson Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party in the early 1960s. The document was brought to light by Russian historian Irina Filatova, who has written an article about it on the South African site Politicsweb. It confirms the evidence of Mandela’s Party membership that was published by ASC senior researcher Stephen Ellis in 2011 and in his subsequent book, External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990.  

In this ASC Infosheet, Anika Altaf and Ton Dietz write that if NGOs want to include the ultra-poor in economic programmes, they need to emphasize social protection and human rights approaches that go beyond those programmes. The Dutch faith-based NGO Woord&Daad asked PhD candidate Anika Altaf to carry out research in places where Woord&Daad thought that their partner organisations were making genuine efforts to reach the ultra-poor. This led to four case studies in three countries: one in Bangladesh, one in Benin and two in Ethiopia.

Private wildlife conservation is booming business in South Africa. Nick Steele stood at the cradle of this development in the politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s, by stimulating farmers in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) to pool resources in order to restore wilderness landscapes, but at the same time improve their security situation in cooperative conservancy structures. His involvement in Operation Rhino in the 1960s and subsequent networks to save the rhino from extinction, brought him into controversial military (oriented) networks around the Western world. Harry Wels' unique access to Steele's private diaries paints a personal picture of this controversial conservationist.