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john.njenga.karugia's picture

Indian Ocean as Memory Space: Islam in Indonesia and South Africa

In 2015, during a research stint in South Africa, I visited the Bo-Kaap Museum in Cape Town, South Africa together with some colleagues from the AFRASO project. The museum “showcases local Islamic culture and heritage” associated with Cape Malays that were brought to South Africa as slaves by the Dutch East Indies Company. It was then that I found out about a prominent saint, Sheikh Yusuf, who was an Indian Ocean Muslim scholar and preacher of Islam from Indonesia.

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falk.hartig's picture

China’s Former Basketball Star Yao Ming Works to Save Africa’s Elephants

To help its passengers shorten their time, Beijing Subway screens endless video clips. Most of them are rather boring commercials, some promote the Chinese dream (the latest catch phrase of Chinese politics). Sometimes even people, who are interested in the so-called new Asian-African interactions, can find something interesting in the videos.

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rirhandu.mageza-barthel's picture

From The Frying Pan Into The Fire? Asia’s African Options

Co-authored by Simone Claar

While we were attending the 1st AADUN-AFRASO conference from 11th to 14th March 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we took the opportunity to explore the city on the fringe of the scheduled conference programme and noticed that a variety of South African products were available on the market. This included the usual selection of South African wines but also extended to such condiments as Mama Africa’s or Ina Paarman’s condiments stocked in the local supermarket. Yet, more surprisingly, we also discovered a couple of Nando’s restaurants in some of the most prominent spots of the city: one, for example, could be found in the Times Square Mall and another bordered on Chinatown.

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simone.claar's picture

A little revolution? Open source of SA research

Within the scientific community, the debate about access to research results and the dominance of the main publishing houses has been an ongoing issue in the last years: “You are what and where you publish” in the academic system of the 21st century...

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simone.claar's picture

BRICS-from-below: An alternative to the alternative

Strolling along the beach front of Durban’s Central Business District with its mixture of modern high-rises and colonial-era buildings one can easily understand why South Africa chose the city for hosting the 5th BRICS Summit in March 2013: The modern hotels, conference centers and boulevards represent the South Africa Pretoria wanted to show the Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese heads of state. After all, South Africa is under some pressure to justify its entry into the exclusive grouping in 2010, since in terms of GDP and domestic market it hardly lives up to the other four countries.

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