News & Events

A vibrant new exhibition is on display in the ASC corridors on the 3rd floor and in the ASC Library on the ground floor. Tyler Dolan is a South African photographer specializing in hyper realism that results in colourful imagery. His ‘Walking The Streets’ project documents the various traditions and cultures that reside on the streets of Durban, South Africa. As he writes in the accompanying book: ‘All cities have many sounds and many different kinds of people. (...) We see the street people, we think we know where they come from but we truthfully don’t. This project is about showcasing these people living their everyday lives.’ The exhibition is organised in cooperation with Afrovibes.

Connecting-Africa and AfricaBib are two bibliographic databases hosted by the ASC that offer a wealth of information. Connecting-Africa is a gateway to African research information produced worldwide. It provides access to more than 50000 publications from 90 repositories as well as information on 1350 Africa experts and on 890 organisations. AfricaBib is a collection of Africana social science titles. It consists of five bibliographic databases: Africana periodical literature; African Women; Women travelers, explorers and missionaries to Africa; Islam in Africa; and Kenya Coast, compiled by ASC researcher Jan Hoorweg. Both websites can now easily be accessed via the menu on the left side on our homepage.

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.

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.