News & Events

This seminar on 10 July will discuss resistance and collaboration during the Italian Fascist occupation of Ethiopia, 1935-41, the prelude to World Word II. Shiferaw Bekele, Associate Professor of History at Addis Ababa University, will cast a new glance on the topic on the basis of old and new sources: memoirs of Ethiopian veterans and patriots, autobiographies of Italian participants, and reports of members of the British armed forces who fought in Ethiopia to oust the Italians in 1940-41. Bekele's findings are that ’community collaboration’ from clans, parts of ethnic groups or religious communities, was quite large-scale. Except for the first year of the occupation, resistance was not widespread.

Protests and riots in African cities feature young men as key actors. Often depicted in ambivalent terms as 'Makers and Breakers' or 'Vanguard or Vandals', their diversity and ambiguity obviously challenge theory building. This seminar on 22 May by Joschka Philipps (Center for African Studies, Basel) argues for a more systematic empirical inquiry into youth and politics by taking a comparative perspective. It provides preliminary findings from research in Kampala, Uganda and Conakry, Guinea.

In 1994, Rwanda experienced the worst genocide in Africa in modern times. The UN General Assembly has designated 7 April, the day the genocide started, as International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda to commemorate the terrible events that took place twenty years ago. The Embassy of Rwanda, the International Institute of Social Studies and the ASC are organizing a Kwibuka 20 conference on Friday 4 April to mark the tragedy. To coincide with this and other commemorative events, the ASC Library has compiled a web dossier that contains recently published titles on the Rwandan genocide that are available in the Library.

South Africans will go to the polls on 7 May in what promises to be the country’s most interesting election since 1994. There is no doubt that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will win again, but the polls suggest a much reduced majority. What is the balance sheet of 20 years of democracy? Keynote speaker at this ASC Community Country Meeting on 22 April in The Hague is Prof Susan Booysen of the Witwatersrand University. After her introduction Dutch politicians will enter into a debate.

After an academic career of 27 years at the African Studies Centre, senior researcher Dick Foeken is retiring. Next to his research in the field of urban poverty, urban water supply and urban agriculture, Dick was a member of the management team and deputy director of the ASC. In the nineties he started to coordinate the publications department, thus arranging over 300 publications. Dick started working at the ASC in 1987, when he became part of the Food and Nutrition Studies Programme.

De Nederlandse anti-apartheidsbeweging was een van de sterkste sociale bewegingen van Nederland. Toch heeft de beweging slechts beperkte invloed gehad op het Nederlandse overheidsbeleid ten aanzien van Zuid-Afrika. De achtereenvolgende kabinetten hebben steeds gekozen voor de handelsbelangen van Nederland. Tijdens dit seminar op 1 mei zal onderzoeksjournalist en auteur Roeland Muskens de anti-apartheidsbeweging analyseren. Please note that this seminar will be held in Dutch.

The documentary film 'From Namibia with Love' tells the story of an old Finnish-Namibian couple who fought for Namibia’s independence. In the 1970’s the couple assisted the Namibian Liberation Movement SWAPO that fought the South African occupation. In the middle of the struggle Anita and Salatiel got into a conflict with the SWAPO leadership. The hardships they experienced in the 1970s still haunt them. Filmmaker Laura Meriläinen will be present at this ASC film seminar on 11 April.

East Africa has delivered an impressive economic growth rate and is expecting an economic boom in the near future. However, the ordinary East African does not feel the benefits yet. At the ASC seminar on 15 April Aidan Eyakuze, Associate Regional Director of the Society for International Development, will present the State of East Africa Report 2013, revealing new information and sparking the imagination for the processes that are shaping East Africa.

The ASC Country Portal is online! Offering an abundance of information on African countries. This database brings together sources of digital information, grouped per country: news, statistics (UN, Worldbank, elections turnout), publications, Africa experts, Twitter, maps and much more. While 29 out of the 54 African countries are now ready, all countries can be accessed. Countries that are still under construction are marked as such.

On 21 August 1986 all human and animal life in the Nyos Valley in Cameroon died, without a trace of damage to houses or crops. Until today the cause of this disaster is not known. Was it an eruption of gas from a nearby crater? Or a French nuclear test? An Israelian bomb? Or punshment from the gods? In his book Stikvallei Dutch author Frank Westerman examines not only the facts and theories with respect to this catastrophe, but also the emergence of myths surrounding the mysterious mass deaths. The splendidly researched Stikvallei is our latest Acquisition Highlight. (Please note that it is written in Dutch, as is the book).