News & Events

During a joint lunch seminar on 13 May, organized by the ASC and the International Institute for Asian Studies, the relationship forged between states who follow a liberal economic model (mainly France, Japan and the US) and states directly involved in the investment of capital across their traditional borders (mainly China, Dubai and Malaysia) will be traced. Speaker is Samson A. Bezabeh, Visiting Fellow of the ASC and IIAS.

During the last months of 2014, Google Scholar approached the African Studies Centre and got permission to index the AfricaBib database and use the metadata in Google Scholar. This means in practice that the more than 216,000 records in AfricaBib will be more visible to scholars and other interested persons, and that more scholarly publications about and from Africa will receive the attention they deserve. More news about AfricaBib: as of January 2015, it is possible to search through all records simultaneously in a one-stop search.

The ASC is to perform an evaluation of the 'epicentre programme' of The Hunger Project (THP) Benin. The ASC will assess how THPs strategy has contributed to development processes in Benin. THP Benin is part of the international NGO The Hunger Project. THP works with so-called ‘epicentres’: clusters of villages, or 'dynamic centres where communities are mobilized for action to meet their basic needs'. The ASC will perform an external, qualitative evaluation using the PADev approach. PADev is a participatory and holistic methodology for evaluating development interventions.

African governments generally have been less successful in implementing industrial policies - historically and in the contemporary period - compared to other developing country regions. During the ASC seminar on 4 June, Lindsay Whitfield (Roskilde University, Denmark) will talk about the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented and will identify the politics that make those conditions possible. Focus is on Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. You are all very welcome!

The plot of The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, a new novel by Tendai Huchu (born 1982 in Bindura, Zimbabwe) revolves around the lives of three Zimbabwean expatriates: three different men who struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love. Set in Scotland, where Tendai Huchu also happens to live at present, the book zooms into the life of the expatriate but also provides some valuable insight into the political and economic landscape, the shaky opposition and the corruption which are set into the fabric of Zimbabwean life. The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician is the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight!

In 1962, the South African Liquor Act was revised in a way that finally permitted all South Africans to purchase alcohol. The wine companies anticipated a surge in wine sales amongst black consumers. But while the sale of bottled beer increased exponentially, that of wine increased only slightly. By the 1980s consumption was actually falling. Where had the wine industry gone wrong? Find out during the ASC seminar on 16 April with Paul Nugent, Professor of Comparative African History of the University of Edinburgh!

‘Big data’ (high-volume, digital-born data) has been heralded as a developmental resource, with commentators stressing its potential in predicting crises and better targeting aid. But if data really is the new oil, we might also consider its potential for state- and market-building. This presentation on 11 June by ASC researcher Laura Mann situates big data in its broader developmental context by examining the use of mobile phone and smartcard data in smallholder agriculture and informal urban transport. Please note that this seminar starts earlier than usual, at 15:00.

The new ASC research project 'Society and Change in Northern Ghana: Dagomba, Gonja, and the Regional Perspective on Ghanaian History' will be presented on 9 April. In this project, the ASC works together with the University of Ghana at Legon and the University for Development Studies in Tamale & Wa. The project aims to develop alternative views on the position of Northern Ghana, in particular the regions of Dagomba and Gonja, in the context of long-term processes of change and social-economic and political inclusion and exclusion. 

Visiting fellow Christopher J. Lee (University of the Witwatersrand) will talk about his new book Unreasonable Histories during the ASC seminar on Thursday 26 March. At the book's core are the experiences of multiracial Africans in British Central Africa - contemporary Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia - from the 1910s to the 1960s. Drawing on a spectrum of evidence, Lee traces the emergence of Anglo-African, Euro-African, and Eurafrican subjectivities which constituted a grassroots Afro-Britishness that defied colonial categories of native and non-native.

Diaspora communities and organisations are becoming increasingly influential actors on the international humanitarian stage, often providing assistance in ways that differ from those of the traditional international humanitarian donor community. Diaspora communities provide direct cash transfers, send skilled volunteers that have local knowledge, and compile first-hand crisis information from affected populations. Mobile telephony, e-banking and social media networks have facilitated the establishment of virtual connections between the Diaspora and the populations affected by disasters in their home countries. On 30 March, an expert meeting about the role of these Diaspora actors will take place at the ASC.