In May and June, the Rift Valley Institute will hold the 2018 annual field courses in Sagana, Kenya. Now in their fifteenth year, each course examines a different sub-region within eastern and central Africa: Sudan and South Sudan, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. They offer a dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars, panel…

Chief Morris Ngor of the Buoyar Chiefdom (Western Dinka in South Sudan) is the oldest chief in the Apuk Dinka. He ascended to his position of communal power in 1973, when his father, who was also a chief, was killed by the Khartoum based regime because of his support to the liberation struggle of Anyanya I. Chief Morris’s forty-five years of…

Eye Radio and the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) aired the first of a five-part radio series about the South Sudan National Archives (SSNA) on Wednesday 1 November 2017, in coordination with the South Sudan Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports and UNESCO, with Norway’s financial support. The show’s host, Rosemary Ochinyi, and three South Sudanese…

As part of its ongoing South Sudan Customary Authorities project, RVI, in coordination with staff and students at the University of Juba, organized an event which discussed the role of chiefs. The discussion centred around the screening of RVI’s film We Are Here for the Sake of the People. The role of Chiefs and Traditional…

Why is the Horn such a distinctive part of Africa? This book, by one of the foremost scholars of the region, traces this question through its exceptional history and also probes the wildly divergent fates of the Horn’s contemporary nation-states, despite the striking regional particularity inherited from the colonial past.

It might be shorter to list those who were not critical of international election observers in Kenya.  Following the historic decision of Kenya’s Supreme Court to nullify the August 8 presidential elections, international election observation missions (EOMs) have been pummelled. Leading human rights activist Maina Kiai said: ‘There is something…

The Rift Valley Institute is one of twelve non-profit organisations to be awarded an Open Society Foundation New Executive Fund grant in 2017. The grant, which is intended to assist newly appointed leaders to implement their vision for change, has been awarded to RVI’s Executive Director, Mark Bradbury, who has been in post since January 2017.…

Aweil is lush and green with rains at the moment. Fields that I had last seen hard and crisp with dried seedlings, back in June 2015, are now months away from yielding. Aweil town continues to bustle, with football tournaments every evening at Independence Square, and donkey carts careering past pedestrians hopping puddles. It is often said…

There are precious few history books about South Sudan that look beyond its recent origins. South Sudan: a new history for a new nation is an excellent example of just such a work. Douglas H. Johnson is one of the world’s most eminently qualified authors for such an undertaking, having spent many years chronicling the history of the region more…

Academics, artists, authors, musicians, poets and lovers of their work gathered in Somaliland’s vibrant capital, Hargeysa, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Hargeysa International Book Fair (HIBF) from 22 to 27 July 2017. Among hundreds of the festival’s attendees was a delegation of renowned literary figures from across Africa,…