News & Events

The ASC and the Netherlands African Business Council (NABC) will be organizing the second edition of the Africa Works! conference on 16 & 17 October 2014 in Leiden. The objective is to explore the challenges and opportunities Africa poses to companies, government bodies, NGOs and knowledge centers. Scientific seminars and practical workshops will highlight the themes that are relevant to people working in or with Africa today. Registration is now open!

This book is the first attempt to understand Boko Haram in a comprehensive and consistent way. It examines the early history of the sect and its transformation into a radical armed group. It analyses the causes of the uprising against the Nigerian state and evaluates the consequences of the on-going conflict from a religious, social and political point of view. The book is a co-publication of the ASC and IFRA-Nigeria (Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique).  

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging a brutal insurgency in Uganda since the late 1980s. Little is known, however, about the people who fought against the LRA. Who were these people and why did they take up arms against one of Africa’s most dreaded rebel groups? On 20 March, Klaas Castelein will consider the ‘Arrow Boys’, a militia that was founded in Teso in Eastern Uganda and successfully challenged Kony’s guerrilla fighters from 2003-2005. Castelein's findings are based on yet unpublished sources and data.

This Friday 14 February, 11:45, Lidewyde Berckmoes will defend her PhD thesis entitled 'Elusive Tactics: Urban Youth Navigating the Aftermath of War in Burundi'. This will take place at the VU University. Jan Abbink is her promotor. Everyone is welcome!

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.