News & Events

Chibuike Uche was interviewed by daily newspaper Trouw about the uprising in Nigeria. 'This isn't about Sars or the police anymore. The protest is about the endemic corruption within the public administration, the government and politics', he says. And on a deeper level: 'This is also about the struggle between North and South Nigeria. Between the Islamic North and the Christian South.'

In discussions about conflict in Africa the role of youth and minors is discussed often in a frame of victimhood. In a study funded by UNICEF, a team of researchers based at the African Studies Centre Leiden and in the Anthropology Department of the Univerisity of Bangui have tried to understand the realities behind this phenomenon of 'child soldier'.

Although the mainly Christian Nigerian diaspora in the US have traditionally supported the Democratic Party, Christian groups in Nigeria are now lobbying them to support President Donald Trump in the November 2020 US elections. This is because they believe that it is only Trump that can halt what is widely suspected to be a well-orchestrated attempt by the President Muhamadu Buhari administration to Islamise entire Nigeria. Read Chibuike Uche's analysis in his latest blog!

The decision by HEINEKEN subsidiary Nigerian Breweries to use locally grown sorghum in beer production in 1988 has been a catalyst for the creation of an industrial market for sorghum. Researchers from the ASCL, in collaboration with partners from Nigerian tertiary institutions, have conducted an exploratory research of the socio-economic and agronomic dynamics in this industrial sorghum market. Sorghum production has become an important source of revenue for farmers and the study found impacts on children’s education, meeting food expenses and general well-being.

At the height of World War II the German-language film Germanin: die Geschichte einer kolonialen Tat (Germanin: the story of a colonial deed) was released in 1943. The film was based on a novel written by Dr Hellmuth Unger. Unger was a medical practitioner and fervent supporter of the National Socialist Regime in Germany. The film Germanin depicts the fictional exploits of a professor Dr Achenbach who leads an expedition to Central Africa, Northern Rhodesia and Belgian Congo to test Germanin, a new drug to treat Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness. Read the Library Highlight.

The 2020 Stephen Ellis Annual Lecture will be given by Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University and President of the Academy of Science of South Africa. The late Stephen Ellis' work provides a solid foundation of historical scholarship from which it is possible to understand the pandemic of corruption within the post-apartheid South African government. Nowhere is this history more starkly reflected than in the massively unequal education impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will have devastating consequences for generations to come. The lecture will take place on 26 November, online!