Eastleigh and beyond
While Kenya considers how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees it has hosted for more than two decades, Somali trade and business in Kenya appears to be booming, with links to a wider global diaspora and trade hubs in the Middle East and Asia. Nairobi’s Eastleigh has become symbolic of this […]
South Sudan: Is Peace Possible?
Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced as a result of the political crisis in South Sudan. Armed conflict continues as peace talks between government and opposition begin in Addis Ababa. READ THE MEETING REPORT Leading South Sudanese civil society institutions came together in Nairobi to sponsor discussion of the current […]
IGAD and Somalia
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) aims to promote peace, security, prosperity and economic integration in Eastern Africa. Since 2004, it has been active in supporting the re-establishment of a sovereign government in Somalia. READ THE MEETING REPORT On 25 October 2013, the RVI Nairobi Forum convened a distinguished panel of speakers to reflect on […]
Language Politics and the Politics of Language in Somaliland
On 21 February, International Mother Tongue Day, the Hargeysa Cultural Centre and the Redsea Cultural Foundation paid homage to the Somali language with a day-long seminar followed by an evening of cultural activities. The event brought together linguists and experts in language policy to discuss developments in the language and the use of Somali as […]
Juba Lectures 2014: Negotiating peace in South Sudan—Historical agreements and their lessons for the future
The fourth annual Juba University Rift Valley Institute lecture series took place on 22, 23 and 24 October, in the New Hall at Juba University. The 2014 series examined three historic peace agreements and their implications for the current peace negotiations in South Sudan: the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, which brought the first civil war […]
The Political Economy of Regional Security Integration in Africa
On 18 March, the Observatoire de l’Afrique hosted its first conference of 2015 on ‘The Political Economy of Regional Security Integration in Africa’. Security challenges in sub-Saharan Africa include violent extremism, organised crime, armed conflicts, arms trafficking, and refugee crises. These have a distinct regional character. The nature and scope of regional responses to these have varied […]
LAPSSET: A Transformative Project or a Pipe Dream?
The Lamu Port-South Sudan Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) is an extremely ambitious project. There are multiple elements rolled up in this project: the development of a new port at Lamu; an oil pipeline from that port to South Sudan; road and railway links; and a possible line to southern Ethiopia. There are also plans for a new […]
Development without Freedom
In April 2015 a conference organised by the Development Research Institute of New York University, with Bard College and the Rift Valley Institute, addressed urgent ethical questions surrounding foreign aid in African countries. Africa is the world’s richest continent in natural resources, and a major source of the world’s oil. Economic growth rates in some African […]
The Impact of War on Somali Men
On 9 June 2015, the Rift Valley Institute Nairobi Forum held a public meeting to launch the report of the inception phase of the Forum’s research study, The Impact of War on Somali Men. In the six-month study, funded by the World Bank’s Learning On Gender In Conflict in Africa (LOGiCA) trust fund, researchers from […]
War Crimes and Statebuilding
The Rift Valley Institute’s Nairobi Forum, in partnership with Storymoja Africa, hosted a panel discussion with Rasna Warah (Kenya), author of War Crimes in Somalia, Michael Walls (UK) of UCL, author of A Somali Nation-State, to discuss Somali history, political transitions and foreign aid at the 2014 Storymoja Festival. The authors were joined on the […]