News & Events

Did you miss Rijk van Dijk's inaugural address as a Professor of Religion and Sexuality in Africa at the University of Amsterdam on 24 June? You can now read the full text of his address 'Faith in Romance. Toward an Anthropology of Romantic Relationships, Sexuality and Responsibility in African Christianities', published by the UvA.

As a Zimbabwean playwright who lives in South Africa, Pedzisai Maedza, winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2014, in this web article reflects on the recent 'xenophobic' attacks against African immigrants in South Africa. Earlier, Maedza produced a play about the attacks on immigrants in South Africa in 2008. In 2014, he graduated with distinction at the University of Cape Town on a thesis that studies the use of testimonial performances around the concept of asylum.

The African Studies Centre Leiden organized a conference (on invitation) about the nature and extent of connections between Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and various jihadi movements in Africa on 27 March 2015. During the conference - convened by Professor Stephen Ellis and Professor Benjamin Soares - participants discussed the history, nature and relations of IS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and its Kenyan affiliate al-Hijra, and the African countries in which these movements are most active. You can now read the conference report.

Harrie Leyten's PhD thesis has been published in the African Studies Collection. In the book, Leyten describes how missionaries, anthropologists and curators of ethnographic museums have tried to come to grips with objects with power over the years. The research is based on available literature and makes use of the author’s own experiences as a missionary, anthropologist, Africa curator, and lecturer in museology.

The growing pauperization of the lower classes in Sub-Saharan Africa is giving birth to new religiosities. Unemployed and street-smart individuals try their luck by proclaiming themselves to be prophets. They combine the ‘prosperity gospel’ with shamanic practices to sell ‘miracles’ to desperate people. This unprecedented ‘religious’ fervor in countries like Cameroon, Nigeria and Congo-Kinshasa at times goes along with criminality. How much of these prophets' existence is the result of corrupt governance? This is the subject of the ASC seminar by Dieudonné Zognong (University of Yaoundé I) on 28 May.

This seminar investigates how the indigenous Nigerian cement company Dangote Cement Plc was able to displace long-established cement multinationals and become the dominant player in the country's cement industry. The company achieved this by exploiting its close relationship with the government to champion a ‘backward integration policy’ for the industry. In less than 12 years Nigeria moved from being heavily dependent on imported cement to become the leader in cement production in Africa. Speakers are ASC researchers Chibuike Uche and Akinyinka Akinyoade.