XCEPT research consortium (formerly X-border local research network)
Aims and Objectives Beginning in March 2018, the X-Border Local Research Network is a research consortium aimed at developing a better understanding of the causes and implications of conflict in the border areas of north-east Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This project is part of a broader FCDO programme, X (Cross) Border Conflict – […]
From Dust to Dollar: Gold mining and trade in the Sudan-Ethiopia borderland
From Dust to Dollar focuses on the borderland region between Sudan and Ethiopia, using gold-mining and trade to examine transnational flows of people and commodities across its semi-permeable frontier. Gold mining has shifted from being part of a long-term, family- and community-based livelihood strategy to a short-term entrepreneurial pursuit. Mining is increasingly dominated by the […]
How the Ever Given gave us a lesson in chokepoint politics
Jatin Dua – Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan. After six days stationary in the Suez Canal, the Ever Given—a Panamanian-flagged container ship traveling from Malaysia to the Netherlands—was finally unstuck and able to continue its journey. While the name Ever Given will soon become a piece of trivia associated with a temporary blocking […]
Conversations with RVI researchers: Joseph Diing Majok and Nicki Kindersley
RVI’s Magnus Taylor speaks with RVI researchers, Joseph Diing Majok and Nicki Kindersley, about their latest report, Breaking Out of the Borderlands: Understanding migrant pathways from Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, South Sudan. The report takes the phenomena of the monetization of land, life and work in the borderland and looks at the consequences of this […]
Chokepoints and Corridors: Ordering maritime space in the Western Indian Ocean
In the Horn of Africa there is a dynamic interplay between land and sea that has shaped political, economic and social relationships. Historical and contemporary instances of piracy in the Western Indian Ocean, at different times, precipitated a securitization of this maritime space and made visible the economic and political connections that tie sea to land. […]
South Sudan: Hussein Abdel Bagi deepens his control of the borderland
In February 2020 Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, appointed Hussein Abdel Bagi—head of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance—as one of his five vice-presidents. Abdel Bagi is a member of the Malual Dinka community from Madhol, on the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal border with West Kordofan, and is the son of the late Abdel Bagi Ayii Akol, a […]
Understanding Hussein Abdel Bagi: South Sudan’s vice-president from the borderlands
Key points • Hussein Abdel Bagi’s appointment as the third Vice-President of South Sudan is an important building block for the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), particularly its relations with Khartoum. Hussein’s long experience of Sudanese politics, and friendships with members of the Sudan Military Council, will likely be very useful to President Kiir. […]
Breaking Out of the Borderlands: Understanding migrant pathways from Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, South Sudan
Breaking Out of the Borderlands is the second report by Dr Nicki Kindersley and Joseph Diing Majok on South Sudan’s changing borderland economy. The first report in the series—Monetized Livelihoods and militarized Labour in South Sudan’s Borderlands—described the protracted state of social and economic crisis that has gripped the borderland region of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal. […]
Trading Grains in South Sudan: Stories of opportunities, shocks and changing tastes
Displaced Tastes is a research project run by the Rift Valley Institute in partnership with the Catholic University of South Sudan under the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in the context of the country’s economic transition and place in the regional, cross-border economy of grain. […]
Epidemics in the African Red Sea Region: A history of uneven disease exposure
Summary The sustained movement of people, goods and ideas across the African Red Sea Region has been and continues to be so intense that it binds together communities throughout the region in a unified multifaceted socio-economic system that transcends ethnic, linguistic and political divides. Where people went, viruses, bacteria and parasites followed. As a result, […]