By Amina Abdulkadir In September 2022, the Rift Valley Institute in collaboration with Carnegie Corporation and the Open Society University Network launched the first cohort of the Early Career Researchers’ Training, part of the RVI’s Research Communities of Practice (RCoP)…
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After a two-year hiatus caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, RVI held its first in-person residential course at the end of June 2022 in Naivasha, Kenya. The programme restarted with the popular Horn of Africa course, which focuses on the…
This briefing was written by Micheal Woldemariam and Peter Chonka, the Co-Directors of Studies for the Rift Valley Institute’s Horn of Africa Field Course, which will be taking place in Kenya from 27 June to 01 July 2022. Michael…
Historically the production of knowledge reflects a history of unequal power relations and the economic domination of the Global South by the Global North. Africa sits at the centre of this inequality. Accordingly, the production of knowledge on African…
In June, the Rift Valley Institute will hold the 2020 annual field courses. Now in their seventeenth 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…
Due to operational reasons beyond RVI’s control, this year’s annual Field Courses will now be held in Entebbe, Uganda rather than Ethiopia. Entebbe was the location of the first Great Lakes Course in 2010. RVI is excited to be…
The Institute recently wrapped up its fifteenth year of annual field courses, which were held this year in May and June in Kenya. The one-week intensive courses covered an array of historical and contemporary issues in the Horn of Africa, Sudan and…
In June and July, the Rift Valley Institute will hold the 2019 annual field courses in Ethiopia. Now in their sixteenth 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…
This blog post was written by Yolande Bouka and Marco Jowell, the Co-Directors of Studies for the Rift Valley Institute’s Great Lakes Field Course, which will be taking place in Ethiopia from 3-7 June 2019. Yolande and Marco will be joined…
This blog post was written by Alden Young and Naomi Pendle, the Co-Directors of Studies for the Rift Valley Institute’s Sudan and South Sudan Course, which will be taking place in Ethiopia from 24-28 June 2019. Alden and Naomi will be…
Recent Publications

Commodification and Conflict in the Horn of Africa Borderlands
April 1, 2026
This report synthesizes findings from the Rift Valley Institute’s X-Border Local Research Network (2019–2025). In the surveyed studies, 25 leading local and international area specialists conducted extensive qualitative fieldwork across borderlands in South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Somali

Peace and Instability: Tigray since the Pretoria Agreement
March 26, 2026
CONFLICT TRENDS ANALYSIS / MARCH 2026 Summary THE ETHIOPIA PEACE RESEARCH FACILITY This conflict trends analysis was produced by the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF). The PRF is an independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian

Political Economy of Cash and Markets in Sudan
February 27, 2026
The research provides a snapshot of the war in Sudan in the period from February to April 2025. However, the war is dynamic, with political alliances and territorial control changing. The April 2023 conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)