Between 1991 and 1994, Ellis was General Secretary and then Director of the African Studies CentreatLeiden University in the Netherlands.[2] He remained a senior researcher at Leiden until his death,[2] but after 1994 left his administrative role, first to take up an assignment for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Global Coalition for Africa, which resulted in his next book, Africa Now (1996).[2] From 1997 to 1998, he was a researcher for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[4] He was appointed editor of journal of the British Royal African Society, African Affairs, in 1998, and retained that position until 2006.[3] In 1999, he published, with Jean-François Bayart and Béatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa, a study of the interaction between privatisation and post-colonial patronage institutions in Africa.[5]
Ellis was married to fellow Africanist Gerrie ter Haar. He died on 29 July 2015 in his home in Amsterdam, having been diagnosed with leukaemia three years earlier.[4][8][9] His last book, This Present Darkness (2016), was published posthumously and studies the nature and origins of organised crime in Nigeria.[10] In 2019, Ellis's professional archive was donated to the African Studies Centre in Leiden.[11]
While at Africa Confidential, Ellis reported the first accounts of mutinies in the Angolan camps of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the South African ANC, as well as a detailed account of the detention of Pallo Jordan by the ANC's internal security wing, Mbokodo.[8] These reports were elaborated in Ellis's Comrades against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile (1992), which was co-authored by Oyama Mabandla (under the pseudonym Tsepo Sechaba), a former member of Mbokodo and of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in exile.[8] The book was unpopular with the ANC for its account of abuses in the exile camps, but many of Ellis's allegations were later confirmed in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[12][9] Ellis's External Mission (2012) was also about the ANC in exile and revisited earlier themes, particularly concerning the ANC's intimacy with the SACP. The book also claimed to provide evidence for the long-controversial claim that former South African President Nelson Mandela had been a member of the Central Committee of the SACP. This ignited heated debate,[4][9][13] but Ellis's claim about Mandela was ultimately confirmed true by the SACP itself, following Mandela's death in 2013.[8][14]
Ellis's The Mask of Anarchy (2001), about the Liberian civil war, was shortlisted for the African Studies Association's Herskovits Award,[3] but caused a minor scandal in West Africa when newspapers reported on the book's claim that Liberian warlord Charles Taylor engaged in ritual cannibalism.[5] Some commentators labelled the book racist;[4] and Taylor, then Liberian President, sued Ellis in a London court, but later withdrew the charges.[3][5] Equally controversial, Ellis's later published an article in Foreign Affairs, entitled "How to Rebuild Africa",[15] which construed Liberia as a prime example of a "failed state" in Africa and argued that such states should be brought under a new form of international trusteeship.[3]
Ellis, Stephen (1985). The Rising of the Red Shawls: A Revolt in Madagascar, 1895–1899. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-26287-9. OCLC240094712.
Ellis, Stephen (1990). Un complot colonial à Madagascar: l'affaire Rainandriamampandry (in French). Paris: Karthala Editions. ISBN978-2-86537-160-0. OCLC901606584.
Ellis, Stephen; Sechaba, Tsepo (1992). Comrades Against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile. London and Bloomington: James Currey and Indiana University Press. ISBN9780253318381. OCLC23768989.
Ellis, Stephen (2007). The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (2nd ed.). New York: New York University Press. ISBN9780814722381. OCLC83259970. First edition London: Hurst, 2001.
Ellis, Stephen (2012). External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990. London: Hurst & Company. ISBN9781849042628. OCLC796280138..
Ellis, Stephen (2016). This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organised Crime. London: Hurst & Company. ISBN9781787380271. OCLC1030592296.
Ellis, Stephen (2020). Kelsall, Tim; Randrianja, Solofo; Bayart, Jean-François (eds.). Charlatans, Spirits and Rebels in Africa: The Stephen Ellis Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780197661611. OCLC1311157379.
