By John Ryle Wendy James, who died in Oxford on 27 April, was one of the outstanding anthropologists of her generation. In a trilogy of immaculate field-work based monographs she chronicled the culture and history of the Uduk people…
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We, the staff of the Rift Valley Institute, are extremely concerned about current events in Sudan, and for the lives of those affected by the conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which…
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)…
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…
About SSWRN The South Sudan Women’s Research Network Project (SSWRN) promotes local women’s voices in research development and heritage preservation. It does this through a capacity building and training project that aims to invest in and enhance civil society’s…
The Rift Valley Institute congratulates John Ryle, our co-founder and former director, whose services to research and education in Sudan, South Sudan and the Horn of Africa have been recognised with the award of an OBE in the Queen’s…
The Rift Valley Institute, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Museums and National Heritage, is sharing selected, approved documents from the South Sudan National Archives through social media channels to showcase the range of information available in…
The Rift Valley Institute, Catholic University of South Sudan, and Likikiri Collective are pleased to release the fruits of their latest collaboration. ‘”We’re Graduates Now…” An Oral History Exhibition of University Graduates’ Educational Journeys’ is borne out of an oral…
After a long battle with cancer, our friend and colleague Santino passed away on 28 October 2020 in Khartoum in the care of his family. Santino was deeply dedicated to learning and teaching. Born in Wedweil village north…
Dr Adan Yusuf Abokor (‘Dr Adan’ to his colleagues and friends) who died last week in Turkey, was a remarkable man. Born in Hargeisa, Somaliland, in 1946, he grew up in Aden, Yemen, where he attended a Catholic mission…
Recent Publications
Digital Governance and Security in the Horn of Africa
March 28, 2025
While digital finance—including mobile money—has developed unevenly across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, such technologies are nevertheless transforming everyday economic activities. In some cases, borderlands and cross-border financial flows are central to these digital developments and are driving further innovation. From
Legally Informal: Women, conflict and cross-border trade in the Mandera tri-border area
March 28, 2025
In the Mandera triangle—a pastoralist region encompassing the point at which the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia meet—the reality of local and cross-border trade often diverges widely from official state policies of control. This disjunction has created a grey
Making Sense of Borderlands
March 27, 2025
This think piece is an extract of a longer paper taking stock of the roughly 40 X-Border studies carried out between 2019 and 2025 under the auspices of the Rift Valley Institute’s XCEPT programme. If we are to fully grasp