The South Sudan peace forum
The Rift Valley Institute organised a forum bringing together leading chiefs from five states of South Sudan in Nairobi last Saturday. The forum brought together the chiefs to discuss the current crisis in the country and the role they and other traditional leaders played where peace was concerned. The chiefs included Nyuong Danhier Gatluak the […]
Hasty repatriation
On 15 February 2013, the Nairobi Forum hosted the launch of a report by the Mogadishu-based think tank, the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS), entitled ‘Hasty Repatriation: Kenya’s attempt to send Somali refugees home’. The research was undertaken in late 2012, after the Kenyan government called for Somali refugees to assemble in refugee camps […]
Juba Lecture Series 2013
The 2013 RVI Juba Lecture series, held in collaboration with the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba, were held on 6-8 March 2013 at the university’s New Hall, addressing the theme ‘Building the Constitution in South Sudan’. The three keynote speakers were Professor Akolda Tier, Chair of the South Sudan […]
Every Day Is For the Thief
The Nigerian-American writer, photographer and art historian Teju Cole (@tejucole) was in conversation with John Ryle (@johnryle), Director of the Rift Valley Institute, at Bard College, New York State, on 16 April. Born in the United States to Nigerian parents, Teju Cole was raised in Nigeria and moved back to the United States when he was 17. He currently lives in Brooklyn, […]
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 […]