News & Events

This volume about human trafficking in Nigeria (1960-2020) highlights the overlap between child trafficking and child fostering, presents Nigeria's legal framework and institutional intervention mechanisms, showcases (inter)national organisations' willingness to minimise it, and reveals contexts in which people become victims of trafficking.

On 29 August 1943, Kenyan photojournalist Mohamed Amin was born in Eastleigh, Nairobi. Amin's filming of Michael Buerk's report of the 1984 Ethiopian famine brought international attention to the crisis and eventually helped start the charity wave that resulted in Live Aid concerts.

The ASCL Annual Report for 2022 is out now! In addition to an excellent list of publications by our researchers, you will find other highlights such as new research, testimonials, ASCL Library achievements, the ASCL 75th Anniversary, and much more.

On 18 August 2022, Somali poet, philosopher and songwriter, Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame died in Hargeisa at the age of 79. Born in 1943 in Togdheer, he is known to Somalis as 'Hadraawi', a name meaning ‘the master or father of speech’. 

On 31 July 1945, Cape Verdean writer, publisher and lawyer Germano de Almeida (also known as Germano Almeida) was born on the island of Boa Vista, Portuguese Cape Verde. After completing elementary school on Boa Vista, he attended various secondary schools in the capital Praia (on the island of Santiago) and on the island of São Vicente.

Prof. Peter Little (Emory University, USA) will give an ASCL Seminar on 5 October, in which he will address 'the litany of different development approaches' from the perspectives of marginal populations and geographies in rural Africa.

Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, known as the 'father of Swahili and African linguistics', died on 10 July in Nairobi at the age of 91. His book Muyaka: 19th Century Swahili Popular Poetry has become the reference book that every student of Swahili literature in Europe and East Africa must have been asked to study carefully, writes Annachiara Raia. 

On 19 July 1982, Ugandan poet, novelist, and social anthropologist Okot p’Bitek died in Kampala at the age of 51. His three verse collections - Song of Lawino (1966), Song of Ocol (1970), and Two Songs (1971) - are considered to be among the best African poetry in print.

The new film Le spectre de Boko Haram focuses on daily life in the village of Kolofata in the Far North Region of Cameroon, near the border with Nigeria, where the Islamic terrorist movement of Boko Haram has been active since 2013. What makes the film remarkable is that it concentrates on the life of the children in the village.

On 12 July 2010, Cameroonian journalist and director of Le Messager Pius Njawé died in a car accident in Chesapeake, Virginia, US. Arrested over 100 times for his reporting, Njawé won several awards for his work, including the 1991 CPJ International Press Freedom Award and the 1993 Golden Pen of Freedom.