News & Events

How can we imagine in today’s and tomorrow’s Africa a nation-state in which the cohabitation of ethnic groups forms a positive force? That is the crucial theme in the PhD Defence of Pascal Touoyem (Cameroon) on 18 February in Tilburg. The ethnic reality in Africa continues to be decisive as an absolute dimension of individual and collective life, which puts a heavy mortgage on the normal functioning of these nation-states. That is why the black continent is rich in failed states, or states on the road to failure or collapse. Please note that this PhD Defence will be in French.

It is with immense shock and deep sadness that we have to announce the death of our colleague at King’s College (London), Patrick Chabal. Patrick died on Thursday 16 January, surrounded by his family, after bravely fighting a long illness. Patrick Chabal was one of the founders of AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies) and was a board member for many years. He had a long career in academics. His latest position was Chair in African History & Politics at King’s College.

Rhodesia was founded as a colony in 1890; most of its white population only arrived after World War II. The country did not have a deep history to tie white settlers’ loyalty to the land. So why would citizens fight a 14-year guerrilla war for its sake? That question is complicated by the respective rights and obligations of citizenship and residency. This seminar on 3 April by Luise White will argue that this complexity can only be understood by considering many sources: especially memoir and fiction.

Nigerian scholar Chibuike Uche started as a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre as of 1 January 2014. Prior to joining the ASC, he was Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the University of Nigeria and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Chibuike has a PhD in accounting and finance from the London School of Economics. His current research focus is on the political economy of foreign business operations in Africa.

January 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the so-called Zanzibar Revolution on Sunday 12 January 1964. In the week following the toppling of the newly elected government, the Sultan of Oman fled the island and thousands of people were killed. While a lot of African citizens of Zanzibar will celebrate these events and see them as marking the beginning of the real era of independence, the January Revolution and its aftermath will be mourned by many others. Among them is the Omani writer Nasser Abdulla Al-Riyami, author of Zanzibar: Personalities & Events (1828-1972), subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight. 

The longue durée history of personal capacity and spiritual agency in Gabon is the focus of this seminar by Florence Bernault of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anthropologists and political scientists have been scrutinizing the role of witchcraft in Africa as an agent of everyday life and how it is constitutive of African modernities for the last fifteen years. However, few scholars have contextualized this within a longer history of power, capacity and misfortune. Bernault traces how colonialism was a crucial moment for reconfiguring ideas of personal and collective agency.

Mozambican author Mia Couto has been awarded the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. This biennial award is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary magazine, World Literature Today. Like the Nobel Prize for Literature, to which it is often compared, the prize is awarded for an entire oeuvre. Read the Acquisition Highlight we wrote about Mia Couto.

Due to the closure of the Library of the KIT (Royal Institute of the Tropics, Amsterdam) all 450,000 books that belonged to this institute have been transferred to other libraries at the end of 2013. More than 3,000 books of the KIT collection have been given to the African Studies Centre. They are unique copies: no other library in the Netherlands has any of these books. The titles of all 3,029 books have immediately been made available via the library catalogue of the ASC and are available for loan.

The ASC has published three new thematic maps: Africa’s economic growth from a labour perspective; Sanitation in Africa; and Drinking water in Africa. The three maps visualize themes that are high on the development agenda. They can be viewed in Open Access on our website.

Read the column of ASC director Ton Dietz in the latest (December) issue of OneWorld Magazine. It's about the importance to keep in touch with African scientists in countries where working as a scientist is dangerous.