News & Events

The Library of the African Studies Centre Leiden will be closed from Monday 20 May until (including) Tuesday 4 June 2024. The library of the ASCL will re-open as the African Library on Wednesday 5 June in the Herta Mohr building, located at the Faculty of Humanities.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the aftermath of multiple natural disasters in Malawi, Dr Tanja Hendriks (KU Leuven) will zoom in on different characteristics of disaster governance, detailing how civil servants navigated the numerous demands placed on them. Join us for this event in our new seminar room or attend online!

On 17 April 1929, the Senegalese author and feminist Mariama Bâ was born. Bâ was born in Dakar, into an educated and well-to-do Senegalese family of Lebu ethnicity and was raised a Muslim. Her two novels, So Long a Letter (1979) and Scarlet Song (1981), were written in French and translated into more than a dozen languages.

On 22 March, the first-year students of the ResMA African Studies organised a conference on mineral resource extraction. Bringing together their expertise and that of the guest speakers and various attendees allowed for varied and multidisciplinary discussions of the many dimensions of mineral resource extraction across the continent.

On 7 May at 15:00 hrs. (sharp), Tycho van der Hoog will defend his dissertation 'North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa, 1960-2020'. This thesis explores North Korea’s influential role in the liberation of Southern Africa and describes how African states repay this historical aid today.