Agenda 25 November - 01 December 2018

Speaker: Dr. Stacey Links.  Please register. In her lecture, Dr. Stacey Links will reflect on her recently defended doctoral research, ‘The Impediments to Uncovering the Human Rights Dimension of Sino-African Relations.’ In her research, she argues against the dominant discourse that assumes Sino-African relations to be void of or inimical to human rights. She problematises the discourse’s representations of ‘human rights,’ ‘the nature of relations,’ as well as the ‘actors involved,’ through a critical and postcolonial lens. Dr. Stacey Links is a researcher whose work is focused on the nexus of critical international relations, critical human rights scholarship and development. Her research in her PhD trajectory focused specifically on the human rights dimension of Sino-African relations. Her doctoral research was conducted through Utrecht University and funded by the Dutch Foreign Office as part of a broader project.

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De jaarlijkse Mandela Lezing, een initiatief van het Gentse Afrika Platform, verbonden aan de Ghent University Association, ontvangt dit jaar Zelda le Grange. Zij was bijna 20 jaar de persoonlijke assistente van Nelson Mandela. Zij tekende haar herinneringen op in het boek ‘Good Morning, Mr. President. Le Grange wordt op 26 november geinterviewd door VRT journalist Katrien Vanderschoot. Aan het muzikale propramma wordt meegewerkt door Tutu Puoane.
Locatie: Club Het Pand, Onderbergen 1 in Gent. Aanvang 20.00 uur.
Tickets: webappsx.ugent.be

The seminar is co-organized by the ASCL collaborative research group 'Africa in the World' and the Contemporary History and International Relations Research Seminar series (CHIRRS) of Leiden University.  Material objects like the Kanga, a unique genre of cloth, have stories to tell. The fabric is a historical repository of the migration of Indian traders, who sailed across the western Indian Ocean to the Swahili coast, trading cloth, but also transporting visual aesthetics. Kanga designs feature Paisley/Khorosho motifs, the familiar square and dot patterns that adorn Indian Bandhani, but they also reveal artistic influences from Europe, the Middle East and the inland cultures of the Swahili coast. Over the centuries, this cosmopolitan cloth has mixed the boundaries between the peoples of the continents of Asia and Africa. Please register

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In het afgelopen jaar hebben er veel politieke veranderingen plaatsgevonden in Ethiopië. Sinds premier Abiy Ahmed is aangetreden, neemt hij stappen richting meer democratie, maar heeft hij ook contact gezocht met buurland Eritrea. De twee landen zijn inmiddels al ver in het proces om vrede te sluiten. In samenwerking met het Nederlands Instituut voor Meerpartijendemocratie (NIMD) organiseren we een politiek café op 27 november in Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, waar we bespreken wat deze ontwikkelingen voor Ethiopië betekenen, maar ook wat de gevolgen zijn voor de relatie met Eritrea. De sprekers worden later aangekondigd, en binnenkort kun je je voor deze avond aanmelden. Houd hiervoor deze pagina en onze Facebookpagina in de gaten!

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Political instability in the Sahel is increasing and many observers point at the role of nomadic pastoralists in the various political and jihadist movements. Nomadic populations of the Sahel face changes that seem strongly linked to the dynamics of the state in West Africa as the latter evolved from the colonial process to its current extensions. How these changes affect nomadic populations must be identified and understood. The task, however, is not to provide a holistic analysis of these shifts; it is to describe the ways that pastoral associations perceive and analyse these questions in their activist work – thus providing an understanding of their strategies, actions, and areas of interventions in the face of change. This approach immerses us in the discourse on collective action, as it operates in a nomadic environment. The ultimate goal is to understand the contours of social change in today’s Sahel. Chair: Prof. Mirjam de Bruijn, ASCL. Speaker: Dr Mahaman Tidjani Alou, LASDEL, Niamey. Please register

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Lecture by David Ehrhardt. Governance in Nigeria is commonly associated with oil rents, poor public services, and, above all, corruption. In this light, the re-introduction of sharia in northern Nigeria is often viewed cynically, as a self-serving attempt by religious and political elites to use the public’s religious sentiments to mobilise political support, without actually providing better governance. This lecture examines the development of Islamic authority and governance in the sharia era in northern Nigeria. It highlights that sharia implementation has indeed in some ways been cynically political; yet there are also instances in which it has created opportunities for governance reform and improved public service provision. This variation suggests important hypotheses about the conditions under which sharia can promote good governance.

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