News & Events

The ASCL library has recently acquired a book on the Comoros islands’ history, written by Iain Walker. It traces the unique culture of these islands, from their first settlement by Africans, Arabs and Austronesians, through their heyday within the greater Swahili world and their decline as a forgotten outpost of the French colonial empire.

In Niger, the world’s least educated nation, girls are described as both vulnerable beings in need of protection and as subjects imbued with unique potential, including the capacity to transform their country’s fortunes. This contradiction is the topic of the ASCL Seminar by Adeline Masquelier on 20 April.  

On 9 January 1933, British-South African novelist Wilbur Smith was born in Ndola in what is now Zambia. He specialised in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries. He also wrote a series of historical novels that are based in Ancient Egypt during Pharaoh Memnon's reign.

In 1793, Fulani scholar, poet and educator Nana Asma’u was born in a village called Degel in what is now Northern Nigeria. She was in particular devoted to the education of women. Her Yan Taru, a programme aimed at making education accessible to all, especially women, continues into the 21st century.

'Talking About Trees' is a moving documentary about four older Sudanese filmmakers, Ibrahim Shaddad, Manar Al Hilo, Suliman Elnour and Eltayeb Mahdi. The film focuses on the project of the men to revive the Revolution Cinema, an old cinema in Khartoum. But their plans to renovate the dilapidated outdoor cinema come up against bureaucracy and lack of cash.

UNICEF recently started a campaign to cope with ‘one of the worst emergency situations of the last forty years in Northeast Africa: food shortages as a result of climate change, conflicts, and the war in Ukraine’. Is the ongoing image of food insecurity in Africa correct, Ton Dietz and Jan Sterkenburg wonder?

On 26 December 2009, South African activist, educator, journalist and poet Dennis Vincent Brutus died in Cape Town at the age of 85. He was best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.