ASC staff specialization on CameroonResearch projects in CameroonAfrica and China
Piet Konings The Republic of China's renewed interest in Africa in the era of neo-liberal globalization is one of the most significant developments in the region. This project tries to examine two major questions. First, what factors are behind Beijing's renewed interest in Africa and what is their social, economic and political impact on the continent? Second, what is the response of the African political elite and other social groups to the growing Chinese presence on the continent. What makes a study of Sino-African relations particularly interesting is that, for the African political elite, China appears to offer an alternative development strategy to Africa: non-interference in state sovereignty, freedom from western hegemony and an absence of economic and political conditions to aid-giving. In sharp contrast to the African elite, the responses of ordinary Africans to the growing Chinese presence appears to be less positive. Chinese market practices and labour relations in particular are giving rise to new expressions of social movements of protest and rivalry. Mainline Christian Churches and Neo-Liberal Globalization in Africa
Piet Konings The project examines the role of mainline Christian Churches in Africa during economic and political liberalization. This role appears to be quite varied. While some of these mainline churches have been more or less inclined to support the ruling regimes, the majority of them appear to have made a major contribution to the re-making of the socio-economic and political order. Interestingly, in some African states they seem to have taken over the socio-economic and political roles of the more classic civil-society organizations and to have given birth to wider social movements of protest and contestation. Mobile Africa Revisited: A comparative study of the relations between new communication technologies and new social spaces (Chad, Mali, Cameroon, Angola, Tanzania): Case studies Cameroon and Chad
Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis Nyamnjoh and Walter Nkwi This research programme investigates the relations between mobility, communication technologies and social space. New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been hailed as an opportunity for marginalized areas to become active participants in the 'global village'. In an opposite view, it is feared that the introduction of ICTs will only lead to an increase in social inequalities. Hitherto little research has been done on the actual impact of new ICTs on social relations and the views on these technologies from people from 'marginal' areas. This project seeks to interpret the influence of new ICTs in the context of earlier technological innovations, and histories of mobility and 'marginality'.
Research will be carried out on a comparative basis in remote areas in Africa, through surveying, interviewing and archival research. The project combines various disciplines (Anthropology, History, Communication Studies) and several research institutes (ASC-Leiden, CODESRIA-Dakar, and country specific research institutes in Africa).
Pastoralism, nature conservation and natural resource management in Africa
J.W.M. van Dijk Nomadic pastoralism is increasingly under threat as competing demands are made on natural resources by nature conservation, agriculture and forestry. International environmental NGOs, European Union and national governments therefore seek to intervene in pastoral systems in order to ensure the conservation of nature and wildlife resources. Pastoralists on their side organize themselves to have better political representation and forma countervailing power. The Social history of communication technology and mobility in Kom, Cameroon
W. Nkwi The study aims to write a social history of the Grassfields in Cameroon, Central Africa that focuses on the relations between mobility, communication technology and political hierarchies. It questions what the role of political and social status has been in the formation of the mobile communities that are so typical for this part of Cameroon, and how this is related to the way access to communication technologies is organized and negotiated in society, i.e. how these communication technologies are appropriated by society and by different social and political layers in a variable way. Local and global religion
Wouter van Beek | 
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