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.

The African Studies Centre Leiden is sad to report that Laurens van der Laan passed away in Oegstgeest on 22 March 2024. Van der Laan was a researcher at the ASC from 1969 till his retirement in 1997. Van der Laan’s main publications are on the economy and trade in West Africa, particularly on Sierre Leone.

Contrary to popular perceptions of North Korea as a hermit kingdom, its capital city used to be a hotspot for international travel. During the Cold War a stream of African visitors travelled to North Korea, a largely overlooked phenomenon, writes Tycho van der Hoog.

The Quagga was literally shot out of existence as a species in the second half of the 19th century, with the last attested reports of Quagga in the wild dated to 1878 in South Africa. In a new ASCL Working Paper Jan-Bart Gewald explores the possible connection between the rise of diamond mining in South Africa and the passing of the quagga.

The Jury of the Africa Thesis Award is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 Award is Rachel Dubale, graduate from the Research Master African Studies at Leiden University, with her thesis “They think we can eat the condominium”. Chronicles of Economic, Social and Political Practices in Addis Ababa’s Condominiums.

The effects of air pollution are broadly studied in the ‘global north’. Much less is known about the status and impact of air pollution in developing countries, particularly on the African continent. The objective of this new working paper is to review the existing academic and grey literature on the use of satellite-based air quality data.