Rethinking state-building in Somalia
On 6 December 2012, the Nairobi Forum hosted a seminar on ‘Rethinking state-building in Somalia: Negotiated statehood and hybrid governance’. The first discussion was led by Dr Marleen Renders, author of Consider Somaliland: State-Building with Traditional Leaders and Institutions. Subsequent panels included representatives from Somali Peace Line, the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA), Pact Kenya, […]
Somaliland election observers at the RVI Nairobi Forum
On 4 December 2012, the RVI’s Nairobi Forum presented the assessments of five members of the International Election Observer team who monitored district elections in the Republic of Somaliland on 28 November. They were the fifth democratic elections held in Somaliland since 2002 and followed several weeks of campaigning. The observers presenting their findings at […]
Art, literature, and reconstruction in the Horn of Africa
The Somali Kenyan MP Yusuf Hassan was a conspicuous absence at a discussion on the role of art and literature in social reconstruction in the Horn of Africa, which took place on 10 December 2012 in Nairobi. The MP was injured by shrapnel in an explosion in his Kamukunji constituency in Eastleigh, a largely Somali […]
A Somali Spring?
On 11 October in Nairobi, Professor Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College, North Carolina debated current developments in Somalia with panelists Amal Ismail, publisher and founder of Bridge Magazine, Jabril Abdulle, Director of the Centre for Research and Dialogue in Mogadishu and Matt Bryden, former Chair of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. ‘A Somali […]
Learning from the 2011 Famine in Somalia
In 2011, people in Somalia suffered a catastrophic famine. Since 2012, a group from the Feinstein Center at Tufts University and the Rift Valley Institute has been conducting retrospective research on the famine in Somalia, and in the Horn of Africa region more broadly, with the aim of providing empirical evidence to help prevent or […]
The seventh International Book Fair in Somaliland and the opening of the Hargeysa Cultural Centre
The Hargeysa International Book Fair, which took place in Somaliland’s capital over a week in August, has been an annual event for the past seven years, growing in size and regional importance. The theme of this year’s fair was ‘imagination’. Somaliland—a functioning state since its declaration of independence from Somalia in 1991, but still internationally unrecognised—has […]
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya: The Shifta conflict
On Monday 15 December 2014, the RVI Nairobi Forum hosted a discussion with Hannah Whittaker of Brunel University, author of Insurgency & Counter-Insurgency in Kenya: A Social History of the Shifta Conflict. She was joined by Ambassador Ali Korane, Kenya’s special envoy to the Horn of Africa, and the discussion was moderated by Ibrahim Farah, a Horn […]
Regional Conference: Stabilisation in Eastern and Central Africa
On 12 and 13 March, the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and University of Gothenburg co-convened a regional conference on stabilisation at the Kenya School of Government in Nairobi. The conference—“Stabilisation in Eastern and Central Africa: history, theory, policy and practice under scrutiny”—attracted some 90 participants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and South Sudan, […]
My feudal childhood: A personal history
Tafari Wossen, an Ethiopian journalist and former civil servant, is the founding editor of the Seven-Day Update, a weekly news review published in Addis Ababa. This memoir of his childhood in the province of Waag was presented at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University. It was published by the Rift Valley Institute […]
Experiences of Somali Women in Civic and Political Engagement
In the decades since independence, many Somali women have actively sought to expand women’s political and civic participation in Somalia. From the Somali Women’s Democratic Organization established during the Siyad Barre regime to the Sixth Clan movement founded in 2002, Somali women have a rich history of engagement in politics, peacemaking, and activism. On 6 […]