News & Events

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the aftermath of multiple natural disasters in Malawi, Dr Tanja Hendriks (KU Leuven) will zoom in on different characteristics of disaster governance, detailing how civil servants navigated the numerous demands placed on them. Join us for this event in our new seminar room or attend online!

On 17 April 1929, the Senegalese author and feminist Mariama Bâ was born. Bâ was born in Dakar, into an educated and well-to-do Senegalese family of Lebu ethnicity and was raised a Muslim. Her two novels, So Long a Letter (1979) and Scarlet Song (1981), were written in French and translated into more than a dozen languages.

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.

On 7 May at 15:00 hrs. (sharp), Tycho van der Hoog will defend his dissertation 'North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa, 1960-2020'. This thesis explores North Korea’s influential role in the liberation of Southern Africa and describes how African states repay this historical aid today.

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.  

On 11 March 1978, Durodola Durosomo Duroorike Timothy Adisa Ladipo, more commonly known as Duro Ladipo, died at the age of 51 after a short illness. He was one of the best known and critically acclaimed Yoruba dramatists who emerged from postcolonial Africa.