A year after the independence of South Sudan, RVI Executive Director John Ryle gave a lecture on Africa’s newest and most contentious border at the Centre for Federal Studies of Addis Ababa University on 25 October 2012. Demarcation of…
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The new hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan have generated renewed interest in two RVI publications: Douglas Johnson's When Boundaries Become Borders and Eddie Thomas' The Kafia Kingi Enclave. The books offer the most detailed available account of border…
Recent Publications

The Political Economy of Coffee in the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji Belt, Southern Ethiopia
September 4, 2026
This report is part of a wider research project on the political economy of coffee in Ethiopia in the context of the political transition since 2018. It focuses on the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji coffee belt in southern Ethiopia, aiming to understand the

SHECONF 2026: International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities
July 9, 2026
Event report On 26 March 2026, researchers, practitioners and academics gathered in Addis Ababa for SHECONF 2026, an International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities in Ethiopia, the first of its kind convened by the Ethiopian Women Researchers Network (EWNET).

State Capture in Africa: How elite networks undermine democracy, development and security
June 24, 2026
Key points State capture has been increasingly recognized as a major governance challenge due to the way it helps to drive many of the most pressing problems facing contemporary states, including democratic erosion, corruption, economic exclusion, insecurity and declining trust