News & Events

The research project 'Defining, targeting and reaching the very poor' has resulted in field reports on Bangladesh, Benin, Jeldu (Ethiopia), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and a synthesis report. Anika Altaf is a PhD candidate whose research aims to discover how extremely poor people can benefit on a long-term basis from poverty-alleviation initiatives. In addition, she attempts to find out who the ultra poor are and what struggles they face.

In October 2014 a massive popular uprising in Burkina Faso, spearheaded by the trade unions, toppled the regime of Blaise Compaoré. The unrest bore a striking resemblance to that of January 1966, when the trade unions led widespread demonstrations that ousted the country’s first president, Maurice Yaméogo. On neither occasion was the trade union movement sufficiently united to define a new political agenda for the country. Professor Craig Phelan (Kingston University London) will discuss the pros and cons of trade union pluralism in Burkina Faso on 21 April.

Youth culture and popular music are important sites for critical reflection on contemporary society and social change. They emerge as forms of protest and critique in response to discrimination and marginalization, inequality and injustice. Mirjam de Bruijn (Leiden University), Kno’Ledge Cesare (poet, blogger and motivational speaker) and Croquemort (slam artist) will discuss these issues on Wednesday evening 20 April in Museum Volkenkunde, in the African Arts and Literatures series (#3). 

Press cuttings from 1968 about the banning of the miniskirt in Malawi, a proposal for the Republican Constitution of Malawi dated 1965, field notes of conversations with local court chairmen: the Library of the African Studies Centre Leiden is thrilled to have acquired the archives of scholar Franz von Benda-Beckmann, who collected material about legal pluralism in Malawi in the 1960s. His wife, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, kindly donated 3 small boxes containing interesting material on Nyasaland and Malawi, including old Constitutions, law books, reports from local courts, penal codes and folders.