News & Events

On 30 September 2012, Somali poet and political activist, Mohamed Hashi Dhamac, better known as Gaarriye, died at a hospital in Norway. He is regarded as one of the most important Somali poets of the twentieth century.

On 20 September 1967, Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.

Aqeeqa is a play written by Assad Bhuglah, an economist who served as a trade expert for the government of Mauritius from 1981-2016. He produced several books on historical figures as well as fictional works. Aqeeqa is his first work with an explicit religious theme. It deals with the Islamic birth ritual consisting of naming, hair shaving and animal sacrifice.

John Kegel has been awarded a Kiem seed grant from Leiden University for the project 'The re-enchantment of infrastructure in Africa: Comparing Colonial and Contemporary Coastal Corridors'. The Kiem grant is an initiative from the university to stimulate new interdisciplinary, interfaculty research partnerships and encounters.

On 14 September 1924, Sierra Leone Creole academic, diplomat, physician, writer and poet Davidson Sylvester Hector Willoughby Nicol CMG, pen named Abioseh Nicol, was born in Freetown. He obtained degrees in the arts, science and commercial disciplines. Nicol also contributed to medical science when he was the first to analyse the breakdown of insulin in the human body, a discovery which was a breakthrough for the treatment of diabetes.

On the occasion of the workshop Global and Local Political Debates over Women’s Rights, and Everyday Life in Muslim Africa, on 20 and 21 September, the ASCL Library has compiled a web dossier on Women in Muslim Africa.

We are thrilled to announce that the Stephen Ellis Lecture 2023 will be given by Dr Mercy Iroaganachi, University Librarian of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her lecture deals with the place of archives in modern African Studies and puts a searchlight on the patronage of the National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan.

The new students of the Master and Research Master African Studies, as well as the LDE minors African Dynamics and Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Global Development have started! Early September, more than sixty students were introduced to their courses.

As part of its teaching innovation agenda, the ASCL took the lead in a EUniWell project that explored how students from different geographical and cultural backgrounds perceive well-being in their respective societies. 

European policymakers ask themselves why African governments no longer seem to want to deal with European partners, but instead turn to Russian, Chinese, Brazilian and other collaborators. But seen from Africa, Europe's actions do not create goodwill and trust, Mayke Kaag writes in a new blog.