News & Events

This ASC seminar on 2 April wants to contribute to discussions that aim to reassess 'fortress conservation' ideas and practices. It does so by analyzing how new online media are changing the politics of access to and control over increasingly militarized protected areas. Focusing on South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Bram Büscher (Wageningen University) argues that new media such as online groups, webcams and mobile phone apps encourage a new politics of social distinction in relation to the park and what it represents.

'As the general elections in Nigeria approach, all is set for turbulence, including unfortunate and avoidable deaths, all of which will be followed by business as usual for another four years. Or will things turn out differently this time? There are several reasons to not ignore this hunch', writes Dr Ayo Ojebode, senior lecturer at the Department of Communication & Language, University of Ibadan (Nigeria), in this ASC web article. Dr Ojebode is a Fellow of the ASC Community.

Most of the (auto)biographies of politicians, religious leaders and businessmen (or women) that the ASC Library acquired last year in Kenya and Uganda highlight the achievements and successes of these persons. However, Politics of poverty: the Odinga curse to the Luos! (published in 2012) by Ojijo, a Kenyan Luo living in Kampala, falls into a different category. It is a rather heated political and ideological pamphlet blaming Raila Odinga - then Prime Minister in a power-sharing construction with rival Mwai Kibaki as President - for not having brought 'an iota of development in Luoland'. Ojijo's book is the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight!

The African Studies Centre publication Fundamentals of human resource management: emerging experiences from Africa (2011) by Josephat Stephen Itika is the most downloaded book from Leiden Repository in 2014. Leiden Repository is the Open Access publications bank of Leiden University and affiliated institutes. The Open Access repository is very popular: publications were downloaded 3,2 million times in 2014, the African Studies collection saw 378,000 downloads; both figures are 25% more than in 2013. Four out of the five most popular downloads were about an African subject.