News & Events

Due to the scarcity of rental property in South Africa’s rural areas, real-estate entrepreneurship has become a highly lucrative enterprise. While for many South African entrepreneurs the high rents are a struggle, they do not deter migrants, in particular from China. This ASC seminar by Nkululeko Mabandla from the University of Cape Town will show how these processes are leading to forms of class realignment and changing patterns of consumption in South Africa’s rural towns.

In line with many West African nations, Niger’s democratization process in the early 1990s led to the spread of Orthodox Sunni Islam (Salafism). However, in contrast to neighbouring countries, Niger has not experienced large-scale Islamic violence nor have the various governments given in to Islamic demands to abandon the secular state. Salafism remained ‘quietist’. The seminar by Dr. Sebastian Elischer on Thursday 12 December will try to identify the causes that have led to the rise of quietist Salafism.

Social Protection is high on the development agenda. In African countries governments, NGOs, donor agencies and the private sector have been involved in social protection initiatives which run alongside local and informal mechanisms of social support. The Library of the African Studies Centre has compiled a new (bibliographic) web dossier on this subject, containing titles available in the ASC Library. Simultaneously, ASC partner The Broker has published a dossier about social protection.

The debut novel by Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo was nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2013. This makes Noviolet Bulawayo the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her book We Need New Names tells the story of Darling and her friends Stina, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Bastard.

Esther Bergstra and Roxanne Hornman (Wageningen University) have won the Africa Thesis Award 2013. For their thesis Cyclone Resilient Landscape: the Case of Vatomandry, Madagascar, Bergstra and Hornman conducted research into the effects of cyclones in Madagascar. They focused on the Disaster Risk Reduction programme of the non-governmental organization CARE, that aims to diminish the effects of cyclones. The students conclude that an approach that would integrate the ‘landscape based design approach’, a method commonly used in landscape architecture, could improve the resilience of the landscape and its people.