News & Events

A new ASC working paper reviews Dutch development policies for the years 1949-2015, with particular attention for private sector development (PSD). Since the beginning, Dutch government has strongly supported policies stimulating private sector and economic development in the Netherlands and in developing countries. PSD took a central role as it was assumed that poverty could only be alleviated when a country’s economy is stimulated. The long history of Dutch development cooperation shows continuity in its approach towards development policy as a way of promoting Dutch businesses and export in developing countries.

In his new book Forged in the Great War: People, Transport, and Labour, the Establishment of Colonial Rule in Zambia, 1890-1920, Jan-Bart Gewald, Professor of Southern African History at Leiden University and senior researcher at the ASC, writes about the establishment of colonial rule in Northern Rhodesia (currently Zambia). In contrast to historians who argue that the colonial state nearly collapsed during World War One, Gewald argues that the establishment of effective colonial rule in Northern Rhodesia only came about on account of the unique conditions that developed in WWI. Read the interview we did with him!

The last two articles that our late colleague Stephen Ellis (1953-2015) completed, have been published. His final article, 'Nelson Mandela, the South African Communist Party and the Origins of Umkhonto we Sizwe', concerns Mandela’s relationship to the South African Communist Party (SACP) in the early 1960s, when the guerrilla army Umkhonto we Sizwe was created. It demonstrates that Umkhonto was essentially a creation of the SACP, as newly available archives reveal. The other article, co-authored by Mark Shaw (University of Cape Town) is entitled 'Does organized crime exist in Africa?'.