The African Studies Centre (Afrika-Studiecentrum) is an independent scientific institute in the Netherlands that undertakes social-science research on Africa with the aim of promoting a better understanding of historical, current and future social developments in Sub-Saharan Africa. The present director is Ton Dietz. The institute is located in the Pieter de la Court Building of Leiden University’s Faculty of Social Sciences.
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The main objectives of the African Studies Centre (ASC) are to promote and undertake scientific research on Sub-Saharan Africa in the social sciences and humanities, to function as the main focal point for African studies in the Netherlands and contribute to education and teaching in this field, and to promote the dissemination of knowledge and an understanding of African societies.
Research at the Centre is organized in so-called theme groups. Each group consists of a number of ASC researchers and various affiliated members from other academic institutions in the Netherlands and Africa. The researchers in each group have different disciplinary backgrounds so the theme groups are, by definition, multi-disciplinary in character and are built around a major research theme that together form the institute’s research programme. The three current theme groups, which run until 2011, are "Connections and Transformations: The Social Construction of Linking Technologies in Africa and Beyond", "Economy, Environment and Exploitation", and "Social Movements and Political Culture".
The Centre’s library consists of some 80,000 books and about 2,000 journals (including electronic journals), government reports, brochures, African newspapers and about 1,000 documentaries and feature films on video and DVD. The Centre has also developed a web service, Connecting-Africa, with links to more than 20,000 online articles about Africa.
The Centre was founded on 12 August 1947. Over the years, many well-known Dutch Africanists have worked at the African Studies Centre, including the poet Vernie February, the activist Klaas de Jonge, the sociologist Robert Buijtenhuijs and the film director Emile van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal. Barbara Harrell-Bond worked at the Centre in the 1970s. Kofi Abrefa Busia, who later became prime minister of Ghana, was working at the African Studies Centre between 1959 and 1962. Former director Stephen Ellis was editor in chief of Africa Confidential.
The Centre was one of the founders of AEGIS, a network of African Studies Centres in Europe that was set up in 1991 to build upon the resources and research potential available within Africanist institutions in Europe.
The Centre publishes extensively, sometimes in cooperation with publishers such as Brill Publishers in Leiden. Among the ASC publications are