News & Events

The ASC is pleased to announce the winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2015: Merel van ‘t Wout, for her thesis 'Entrepreneurs by the grace of God: Life and work of seamstresses in Bolgatanga, Ghana'. Van 't Wout completed her research master in Modern History and International Relations cum laude at the University of Groningen. Her research project aims at understanding the expectations and motivations of young women in Ghana's Upper East region to start their own business. It intends to contribute to, and criticize, the dominant discourse in the global development agenda on the need to advance entrepreneurship.

Stephen Ellis' wife Gerrie ter Haar, Honorary Fellow of the ASC Community, would like to thank all of you for your expressions of sympathy following Stephen’s death. She is also grateful for the practical support provided to her to finalise some of Stephen’s work. This includes his book on the history of organized crime in Nigeria that is scheduled for publication in Spring next year, in the UK as well as in the US. Two academic articles that Stephen finished also shortly before his death will be published in the next couple of months. Read the thank-you card here.

Ms Sheila Keetharuth, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, will give a lecture at the ASC on Tuesday 29 September, followed by a discussion. During the meeting, economic and social-cultural human rights, as well as children’s rights, in particular of unaccompanied migrant children, will be discussed. Young Eritreans flee the country massively. After Syria, it is the country most refugees entering Europe originate from. Ms Keetharuth presented her report on the human rights situation in Eritrea last June.

On behalf of the jury of the Africa Thesis Award, the ASC is pleased to announce this year's final four nominees. In alphabetical order: Ruth Murambadoro, for her thesis on the politicalization of reconciliation in Zimbabwe; Tata Donita Nshani for her ethnography of gender relations in North West Cameroon; Akosua Sarpong Boakye-Ansah for her thesis on inequalities in drinking water quality in urban areas in Malawi; and Merel van ‘t Wout for her thesis on seamstresses in Bolgatanga, Ghana. The winner will be announced soon!

Margot Leegwater's PhD thesis has been published in the African Studies Collection. Her study examines the effects of land-access and land-tenure policies on local community relations, including ethnicity, and land conflicts in post-conflict rural Rwanda. Violence has historically often been linked to land, and the current growing resentment and fear surrounding these land-related policies and the ever-increasing land conflicts could jeopardize Rwanda's recovery and stability. Leegwater succesfully defended her PhD dissertation on 16 September at the VU University Amsterdam.

Het ASC interviewde promovenda Margot Leegwater over haar onderzoek naar landconflicten in Rwanda. Leegwater zal op 16 september 2015 promoveren aan de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Titel van haar proefschrift: 'Sharing Scarcity: Land Access and Social Relations in Southeast Rwanda.' (English:) The ASC interviewed PhD candidate Margot Leegwater about her research on land conflicts in Rwanda. Leegwater will defend her PhD Thesis on 16 September 2015 at the VU University Amsterdam.

David Livingstone and the Myth of African Poverty and Disease is an unusual book. After a close examination of Livingstone's writings and comparative reading of contemporary authors, Sjoerd Rijpma has been able to draw cautious conclusions about the relatively favourable conditions of health and nutrition in southern and central Africa during the pre-colonial period. The surprise awaiting travellers in and also before 19th century Africa was that the inhabitants of the interior, even the 'slaves', were healthier and better fed than many Europeans. Sadly, Sjoerd Rijpma died on 6 February of this year. 

The courage of ǁkabbo: celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Specimens of Bushman folklore(2014) is the ASC library’s most recent acquisition relating to the famous ǀxam and ǃkung archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. ǁkabbo was the oldest of the speakers of the ǀxam language that stayed in the Bleek household at different times during the 1870s. He expressed the wish that the stories of his people would be known through books. Lucy Lloyd hadSpecimens of Bushman folklore published in 1911.The courage of IIkabbo contains papers presented at the conference with the same name in South Africa in 2011, and is the subject of ourlatest Acquisition Highlight.

ASC researcher Walter van Beek and William C. Olsen (editors) and the contributors to this volume of essays seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, the essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. The studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.

ASC researcher Marcel Rutten and PhD candidate Maru Shete Bekele contributed to the new book Africa's Land Rush: rural livelihoods and agrarian change. Their chapter deals with large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia and the implications for agricultural transformation & livelihood security, by taking an Indian agricultural company in Ethiopia's hinterland as an example. Former ASC visiting fellow Dzodzi Tsikata, currently president of CODESRIA, is one of the editors of the book.