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Posted on 9 November 2011, last modified on 9 October 2023
23 June 2014
The ASC Library has been given valuable archival material from the estate of the Dutch anthropologist Sjoerd Hofstra (1898-1983), appointed Professor of African Anthropology at the University of Leiden in 1947. Between 1934 and 1936 Hofstra did research among the Mende in Sierra Leone, but he never fully wrote up his study of the Mende community. The ASC selected 67 publications from his archives; these have been incorporated into the library collection. The remaining boxes contain fieldwork notes that are handwritten (mostly in English) and cover e.g. the social organization of the Mende, but also interviews with local people. The Hofstra archives are the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight.
20 June 2014
The Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa is one of the joint multidisciplinary centres of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam. It investigates how frugal innovation can contribute to inclusive growth and transformation in Africa. Frugal innovation is usually defined as stripping down and re-engineering products to offer quality goods at very low prices to poorer consumers. André Leliveld of the African Studies Centre (Leiden), Peter Knorringa (Erasmus) and Cees van Beers (Delft) are the three principal researchers.
16 June 2014
Rural households in Ethiopia are regularly confronted with a variety of risks and shocks that leave them vulnerable to economic deprivation. These shocks can be classified in to four main categories: health-related events, natural events, economic events and crime/conflict-related events. Conventional wisdom argues that by drawing on informal risk-sharing networks, households are more successful at insuring themselves against household-specific shocks, such as illness, compared to the common shocks that also affect other members of a village or region. Based on a 2011 survey of 1632 households in four Ethiopian regions – Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya and SNNPR – and event-history interviews, this ASC Infosheet provides details of a multi-shock analysis and an examination of the coping responses triggered by different types of shocks.
13 June 2014
The African Studies Centre has been awarded two research grants in the framework of the NWO-WOTRO programme on Inclusive Development. The first research project focuses on increasing the political influence of informal and formal workers’ organisations for inclusive development in Ghana and Benin. The second research project explores how Dutch multinationals can help promote sustainable productive employment and inclusive development in Sub-Sahara Africa, in particular Kenya and Nigeria.
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26 September 2024
10 October 2024